I Remember You
by SunbakedGeoduck
Summary: 1 year after Jason Brody became island legend, John McCarthy and his friends are forced into a slave camp now run by Dwight Volker, the younger Volker sibling. Jason may be gone, but he's certainly not forgotten, by one particular man thought to have been killed by Jason himself. With Vaas obsessed with the idea that John isn't who he says he is, can he and his friends survive?
1. Chapter 1

_Hi everyone! I've been trying to think of a Far Cry fanfic for ages, and I hope you like what I came up with. I'm a huge fan of the games, particularly Vaas' character (naturally), and I hope this does it justice. :)_ _Any questions/comments you want to make, feel free, and enjoy! :)_

"Tequila is my ladyyyyy!"

I turn around as JD slams another shot down on the bar, his free hand immediately groping for the bruised slice of lemon stuck to the countertop. He peels the lemon off the side, his face turning a ruddy shade of red as he coughs and splutters, and hurriedly sticks the lemon between his lips. He sees me looking over at him and sticks his middle finger up at me, his lips splitting into a drunken smile around the lemon wedge. I laugh loudly and aim a punch at his stomach, hitting him hard enough that he chokes on the lemon, gagging on it briefly before spitting it onto the floor. It lands with a soft squelch by my feet and I kick it away, laughing and groaning at the same time. "You're fucking disgusting, man," I say proudly, clapping JD on the back so hard he splutters. "And _you're _a fucking asshole," he says hoarsely, his voice as dry as a chain smoker's. "Fuck, didya have to punch me so fucking hard? Shit, man, I feel like I'm gunna puke."

"That's just you not being able to hold your drink, nothing to do with me," I say, slapping my hands down on the bar hard. The countertop is soaked, slick and sticky where alcohol has been carelessly slopped over it, and there are groves carved into the dark wood, like someone was chiselling chunks out with a particularly sharp knife. I slowly withdraw my hands and try to subtly wipe them on the back of JD's t-shirt.

He notices my aim immediately and swats my hands away, scowling at me. "Fuck off, man, don't you even touch me with that shit."

"Hey!" I shout at the bartender, leaning as far as I can over the counter without having to touch the disgusting shit coating the top. The bartender, a short middle aged man with hair as black as oil and tattoos disappearing up the sleeve of his plain gray shirt, looks over at me with an increasingly annoying look, like we're burdening him or something. It's been niggling at me for a while now, that exasperated look, and the tequila sitting hot in my chest isn't exactly calming me down, but I grind down on my anger, letting it bubble away under the surface. You don't fuck with the guy who serves you food or drink, or you'll end up with some nasty-ass infection. "Can we get another bottle of tequila for me and my amigos over here?" I shout, a little louder than I probably should. My tongue trips over the word _amigos _and I know I sound like every fucking newbie tourist to ever traipse through this shithole, but I don't care. I clap JD on the shoulder, giving him my best winning smirk as I do so. "And, since I can't get my wallet with all this shit all over my hands, I guess it's your round."

JD glowers up at me, snapping his arm out to give me a punch on the arm. "I hate you so much, dude."

I start backing away, arms extended at my side. "Didn't even feel it, bro, didn't feel a fucking thing, bro."

JD straightens his back and shoves his arms out to the side too, defensively. "You wanna fight me, bro? You wanna fight me, bro?!"

I slap my hands against my chest. "Come at me, bro. Come at me, bro!"

"I'm right here, bro, right here!"

I start laughing, stopping abruptly as I bump into someone. I turn around slowly, a smile spreading across my face as I gaze down into Marie's little face, her pretty fox-like features all scrunched up in fond disapproval. "You guys are such assholes."

"How very dare you. I am an absolute delight. Ask anybody."

"The polls came back. I'm afraid you've lost the popular vote."

"Is it because of that whole silliness with the sheep? Because, I swear to God that was not what it looked like. I thought they were pillows."

Marie's scowl disappears and she starts giggling, slapping at my arm weakly. "You're an ass."

"I prefer the term 'scoundrel'. Or 'rascal'. Sounds a little bit more adorable."

"Of all the things anybody's ever called you-"

"I really don't think we should repeat that list in civilised society. There are ladies present!"

"- 'adorable' isn't one of them."

I put on my best winning smile, the smile that my best friend Shane told me made even him want to do me, and I move a little closer to her, knowing full well how uncomfortable this would make her; immediately she starts brushing her hair back over her ear, the vibrant copper color dancing in the low light, and her face reddens, giving her pale skin a lovely rosy glow. She stands awkwardly, not knowing how to hold herself, and I'm not sure if it's the alcohol or not, but I have the urge to tell her just how beautiful she really is, like how she _really _is, even if she doesn't believe me, which she obviously doesn't. She'll just think I'm drunk or something. Which I am, but still. My point would have a point.

"You don't think I'm adorable?" I ask teasingly, ducking my head and looking at her through my eyelashes, the 'Clooney' move Shane swears works every single time on any woman anywhere. He even swears it worked on a lesbian one time. I'm not sure whether or not to believe him. Best friend or not, he comes out with a lot of bullshit.

Marie shifts her weight, not meeting my eyes. Her face reddens and I suddenly feel very mean for making her feel so uncomfortable. I step back, and chuckle nervously, guilt washing up in my stomach like vomit. Or maybe that is vomit. Either way, stepping back is a pretty good idea. "Sorry. Drunk John's at the wheel. Please leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep," I say, flailing my arms around wildly as I draw out the last word, trying to make her laugh. It works; her face lights up again and her eyes sparkle and she is just so beautiful. Why have I not told her that yet?

"Hey," I start to say, attempting to use my serious voice, the one I reserve for parents and for cops and for interviewers, but then I'm drowned out, overridden by a shrill shrieking noise that makes me want to put my head in a bucket full of water. Tina runs up behind me and leaps on my back, wrapping her arms around my neck like a spider monkey and squeezing tightly, much too tight.

"You guys!" she screams, like a child hopped up on sugar, and plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek. She scrambles down off my back quickly, and wraps her arms around my waist. Drunk Tina gets very touchy feely. It's a little intense. I should know; sophomore year, she and Shane had sex at a party and she ended up sobbing all over me about it. But she's with a guy called Tommy now, a guy she insisted on bringing with her on this trip. I haven't had much of a chance to talk to the guy, but Marie says he's nice enough. I probably should do the tough guy thing, check him out and make sure he's good enough for Tina, but I trust her. Well, I trust Sober Tina. Drunk Tina is a different matter. She's like a drunk child.

"How great is this, guys?!" she shrieks, looking up at me all excited, her baby blue eyes shining with childish wonderment. I laugh awkwardly and pat her shoulder, trying to pry her off me. She holds firm. She's like a human vice, and she's like fucking four feet tall, it's ridiculous. Man, she must have been terrifying in bed. "This is amazing!"

"Amazing is right, my darling," a deep voice booms from behind me and then, out of nowhere, another set of arms wrap around me, stronger this time, a man's arms. I look over to the source of the arms and Shane beams back at me, fluttering his blonde eyelashes like an old-fashioned damsel and resting his fuzzy blonde head against my bare shoulder. "And I get to share it here with you, Johnny."

I look over at Marie, who's watching this with a growing smirk on her face. "Shane, I thought I talked to you about this," I hiss in mock-urgency, shaking my shoulders and freeing myself from his grasp. "You weren't supposed to do that in public."

Shane's face twists and he pouts, making his lower lip shake like he's about to start crying. "I don't know how long I can keep doing this, Johnny! It's tearing me up inside!"

"Don't you think it hurts me too?!" I turn away, leaning against a nearby wall, covering my face with my forearm. "Goddamn it, Shane, I wish I knew how to quit you."

"You guys are so fucking weird," Tina remarks, cheekily.

"By extension, that makes you weird too."

"I'm the token normal one."

"Ah!" Shane cries, holding up one finger and leaning in closer to her. "But, is normal truly normal if the majority are insane?" He holds his hands up to his head then and mimes an explosion. "I just blew your fucking minds."

"Three years on a psych major well spent," I remark under my breath to Marie, cackling loudly when Shane shoots me a look. "You can fucking talk, sports star."

"Don't hate me because I'm a winner. A beautiful, beautiful winner."

"Jesus fucking Christ, you guys don't ever shut up, you know that?" JD says, bustling over to our table with a tray full of shots and a half empty bottle of tequila. "I can hear you all the way from the fucking bar. FYI: the two of you ain't a secret. I think we all know what 'football practice' means now."

Shane looks at him indignantly. "I think it means football practice, my good sir. We only have sex a little bit afterwards."

"Emphasis on 'little'."

The table erupts with laughter as Shane sticks his middle finger up at JD and gestures to his crotch. "You wanna see it, bro? 'Coz if we do, we gotta go outside, 'coz it ain't gunna fit in this room."

"I think you just need better light to see it, it's hard to look through a magnifying glass in the dark," I pipe up, howling as Shane levels a punch at my arm, growling curses under his breath.

"Alright, alright, alright!" Marie says loudly, shouting to be heard over all of us. She shoves shots at each of us in turn, saving me for last; she hands me the murky shot glass personally and our fingers touch around the glass.

God, she's beautiful.

"Okay, here we go!" she cries, breaking contact and avoiding my eyes. I look down at the table too, not entirely sure where to direct my gaze next. "To us!"

"To a fucking amazing three weeks we got ahead of us!" Shane roars, raising his shot glass high in the air.

"To the end of college!" JD joins in.

"To the real world!" I shout, laughing as the others all groan in my general direction.

"To friends!" Tina says, shrieking the words in her high pitched banshee-wail. We all clink glasses, all shouting wordlessly as one as our glasses touch, and then we slam the tequila down. The liquid burns in my throat and my eyes burn, like somebody punched me in the gut. _Fuck, that's good tequila_.

"Holy shit, that stuff is fucking strong," JD murmurs, coughing and wheezing a little again.

"AGAIN!" Shane shouts, like a general rallying troops. We all shout at nothing in particular again and Shane sets about pouring us all shots, slopping tequila over the table as he does so.

"Hey, you guys," a voice says, timid and soft. We all look up as one to see Tommy, Tina's boyfriend, hovering awkwardly behind her, his hands lightly resting on her shoulders. Next to him is a man I've never seen before, tall and blandly good-looking, like a generic model in a woman's magazine; he's decked out in high-fashion gear, bright blue stuff mixed in with swirls of black. He's beaming at us like we're old friends and this annoys me for some reason. Usually I love it when random strangers befriend us, or act like we've known each other for years, it's fucking hilarious. But, I don't know. Maybe it's because he's directing the majority of his beam at Marie. Fucking asshole. "Everybody," Tommy says, jerking me out of my mind. He claps a hand on the new guy's back, waving his free hand at the rest of us. "This is Doug, Doug, this is everybody."

Doug starts to say something, but Shane interrupts him; he lurches up from his seat and stands formally, like a soldier. "I am Miguel."

I grin from ear-to-ear. I know this routine. I smother the smile and leap up, mimicking Shane's posture. "And I am Tulio."

I hear Marie and Tina groan, but that only makes it better.

"And they call us Miguel and Tulio!" me and Shane say in unison, staring straight at Doug with blank expressions.

Doug bursts out laughing, but it's a shallow kind of laughter, the type of laughter you get when you're not entirely sure what the fuck just happened and you don't want to look like an idiot. "Nice to meet you guys," he says. Even his voice is generic, the exact same voice you hear from a million guys on every teenage drama show going. "You mind if I drink with you?"

"Nah, man, help yourself. Mi tequila es su tequila," JD says, waving a hand at the bottle in front of him. Doug takes that as enough acceptance, reaching behind him to snatch a chair, shoving himself right in the space between JD and Marie. This fucking guy, man.

"So, Tommy says you guys are from Colorado, right?" Doug asks. "Just finished college?"

"We're men now," Shane says in a deeper pitch than normal. Doug shoots Shane a strange look, but doesn't make any sort of comment. That happens a lot around Shane. "Where are you from, man?" Shane asks in his normal voice, busying himself with the pouring of tequila again.

Doug hesitates for a moment before answering. "Chicago originally. Moved out here a couple years ago on the rep scene."

"You're a rep? That must be wild," Marie says, passing out poured shots as soon as Shane is finished with them. Doug looks at Marie with interest, a small smile crossing his lips. "I got stories that ain't exactly appropriate for female company."

"How'd you like it as a rep?" Tina asks. I'm not sure when they did it, but Tommy is now in Tina's seat, with Tina perched delicately on his lap like a child asking Santa for presents.

Doug shrugs. "Eh. It's not bad. I gotta be honest, though, at the risk of losing my job, it ain't exactly the best place in the world to be visiting."

"What, no town pride?" I ask, hearing the sarcasm biting through my voice. It's a lot stronger than I mean for it to be, and Marie gives me a strange look. Thankfully, she's the only one who notices; everybody else is too busy cooing over their shots.

"Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but…" he pauses and then leans in, conspiratorially. "Can I tell you guys something?"

"No," I say automatically, giving him a fake grin to let him know I'm joking. Only I'm not. I just want everybody else to think I am. This fucking guy, man.

Doug ignores me and carries on, looking everybody in the eye in turn as he speaks. "So I'm talking to these kids a couple weeks back, this group of kids like you guys, off on some extreme sports holiday or some shit, I'm not sure. They tell me they're heading off home and I tell them that there's this island that ain't a popular tourist destination, like they don't advertise it on the TV or anything. And it's got the sickest beaches, man, it's beautiful, like how you'd imagine paradise to look; beautiful sun, sea, sand, and there are these fucking beautiful cliffs, man, fucking brilliant to jump off of. So I set them up with this place and, I shit you not, one of them ends up staying there. Last I heard, he was fucking a local, beautiful woman. It's paradise, guys, seriously."

Oh, what complete and utter bullshit.

"Dude, that's bullshit, man," I say, shaking my head, smiling to the others with a 'what is this fucking guy talking' smirk. "Worst sales pitch ever, dude."

Doug gives a fake laugh, like the overly friendly salesman who's so obviously and so desperately attempting to cash in on his friendliness to make you buy his shit. "Alright, you got me. So I do a little work for this place too, trying to drum-up some local business for them. They're good people, man, they need the money, they don't got a lot of other business options. I know I sound like every fucking salesman in the fucking world, but I swear to God, I am not bullshitting you, I swear."

"To be fair, you are wearing a Hawaiian shirt," Shane says. Everybody stares at him.

"Dude, he's not wearing a Hawaiian shirt."

"I'm pretty sure it's a Hawaiian shirt."

"Shane, it's definitely not a Hawaiian shirt."

"Oh. Well, fuck me sideways then, tequila's got me seeing Hawaiian shirts wherever I go."

Everybody laughs and Marie rolls her eyes. Her beautiful big green eyes. "Shane, you're such a fucking waster."

"How far away is this place?" Tina asks, her voice all breathy and excited.

"Only about a three hour boat ride. Wouldn't even take time out of your day for me to show it to you," Doug says earnestly, looking at each of us in turn again. He holds up his hands, in surrender. "All I'm saying is, come check it out. Won't even put a dent in your day and it's fucking beautiful. _And_," he chuckles and holds up the now empty bottle of tequila. "The tequila there is the best fucking tequila you can fucking buy."

"Well, fuck!" JD exclaims, slapping the table so hard the shots shake. "The man makes a fucking good sales pitch."

"That's an excellent fucking point there, my friend," Shane shoots at him.

"You fucking think so? Fuck, that's a fucking good compliment from you, Shane-o."

"Fuck me, you're very fucking welcome, James Danielson."

"Guys!" Marie says, holding up her shot to try and regain order. "Shut the fuck up and let's drink!"

We all cheer again, downing the shot as quickly as possible. As soon as it's gone, Doug hops up and heads for the bar, offering to buy the next round.

This. Fucking. Guy.

"So, whaddya think?" Tommy asks quietly, looking over at Doug's back as he speaks. "Dya wanna check it out?"

I give Tommy an exasperated look. "Tommy. Dude. No."

"Why not?" Tina asks, pulling her full, glossed lips into a pout. "I think it'd be fun! Spontaneous and shit."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah! I mean, how many times are we going to get to be spontaneous like this when we're back home, huh? The most spontaneous thing we'll get to choose is when to have dinner."

"Whoa. Depressing."

Marie looks at me, her big eyes all wide and earnest. "It might actually be fun, John."

"You've got a strange definition of fun, Marie."

"Sun, sea, sand? What's your definition?"

"Not a six hour round boat trip."

"Come on!" Tina moans, slapping my arm, trying to persuade me. "We said we were gunna be as irresponsible as humanly possible on this trip! Getting on a boat with a complete stranger, going somewhere we don't even know sounds about right."

"Tina, that is some seriously fucked up logic you're working with there."

"Johnnnnyyyyyyy," she says in a whine, dragging my name out in that annoying way she does when she's trying to convince me to do something I very much don't want to do.

Shane joins in then, making his voice go all weird and high pitched like hers, and then JD joins in, and then soon, they're all doing it at me, hooting my name at me like a bunch of wasted barn owls.

I glower at all of them and sigh. "If you'll stop making that fucking noise, I'll go."

"No deal!" Shane cries at the same time Tina squeals, "Deal!"

"I swear to God, I'm going to make myself sea sick just to teach all of you a lesson."

Marie beams at me, happily. "Thank you, Johnny."

"Does this mean I'm decision maker for this group? Like, your king?"

"I think we should have a democracy."

"I think, as king, no."

Doug comes back to the table at this point, clutching a new bottle of tequila. He starts pouring the liquid into the glasses on the table, and there's something different about it this time. A different brand? It's got a slightly blackish tint to it, and I wonder if he's switched tequila for sambuca. I fucking hate sambuca. That shit does bad things to me.

"This tequila?" I ask, eyeing it suspiciously. Doug meets my eye for one second and then looks away, busying himself with more pouring. "Yeah," he mutters.

"Are you questioning the free drink, bitch?!" Shane shouts, slamming his hand down on the table again, sloshing yet even more tequila over the table's chipped wooden surface. It feels sodden under my fingers now. "Burn him! Sacrifice him to the party gods!"

Doug finishes pouring the shots, gently passing each of us a shot in turn. The only other person who notices something irregular about the shots is Marie: she picks up her glass and turns it around in her hand, squinting her beautiful jade-green eyes to try and see through the murky glass. A frown blossoms on her face and she shoots me a curious look, opening her mouth to say something only to be immediately overridden by JD. He stands up, swaying dangerously to the left, and hoists his shot in the air. "Oh, captain, my captain!"

Shane leaps up too, managing to spill half of his shot all over his dark clothing as he does so. There's a manic gleam in his nearly black eyes and a slightly pale sheen of sweat covering his usually tanned skin, and I can tell he's absolutely out of it, totally and utterly gone; he stretches his mouth in a smile and echoes JD, grinning maniacally down at the rest of us to get us up too. Tina pops up like a party cracker, dragging Tommy up with her; he wraps an arm around her slender waist as they hold their drinks up high, like they've just won a national championship or something.

Doug stands slower, the straightening of a man almost completely sober, looking at the faces of my extraordinarily drunken friends as he does so. The smile he gives them creeps me out a little.

"Up on your feet, soldier!" Tina shrieks, freeing herself from Tommy's grasp for a moment to pull on my arm. It's like being attacked by a tiny, very blonde dog. I shoot Marie a reluctant look and slowly, reluctantly, rise to my feet. The world spins sickeningly around me as I rise and I nearly slump back into my seat. _Fuck. I'm drunker than I thought I was_.

"Maaaaaaaaarriiiiiiiiiiiiiaaa aaaaaaaa!" Shane sings, jabbing his index finger in Marie's direction. "Don't keep us hanging, babydoll!"

She snorts through her nose and gives him a bemused look. "You've never said babydoll in your life, have you?"

"No, I have not!" Shane bellows back.

She rolls her eyes and rises gracefully to her feet; she seems completely sober apart from the fact that she's having to grab a fistful of Shane's shirt to keep herself upright.

"_**Down it, motherfuckers**_!" JD screeches, thrusting his shot glass into the middle of our circle. Everyone slams their glasses against each other, some so hard I'm slightly worried the glass will just shatter in our fingers, and then everyone starts downing them, even Doug. This alleviates my minor concerns over the suspicious looking liquor – I look at Marie and notice she looks visibly more relaxed too, already pressing the glass to her lips. She catches me staring and a slow, sexy smile spreads across her full lips.

I down my shot hurriedly. _This is gunna get interesting_.


	2. Chapter 2

I wake up to the sound of sobbing.

The first thing I'm aware of is the throbbing pain in my head, dancing around in my skull like somebody who can't play the drums is attacking those motherfuckers with all their worth inside my brain. My throat is incredibly dry, so dry it hurts, but when I try to swallow, something blocks my airway, making me gag. It's the gagging that brings me back into the world, coughing and spluttering and struggling to breathe; I open my eyes, squinting against the sudden rush of a bright light into my eyeballs. It's a warm orange colour, mixed with flickers of red and yellow, and I realise it's an open flame. I blink rapidly a few times, suddenly and completely convinced that I've passed out while a fire rages around me, but, as the scenery clears and the blur in my vision disappears, I see it's just a lantern, sturdily attached to a long brown pole. There are several of them, in fact, located every few meters away from each other, running off into the distance until they're just blurry orange dots.

It's funny. I notice the lanterns first, but I completely miss the bars until I refocus, turning away from the lights to look around.

Bars that look like they're made out of bamboo, but much stronger than that. Streaks of them, horizontal and vertical, running across my vision, no matter where I look.

_A cage. I'm in a fucking cage_.

I lift my head and a pain explodes behind my eyeballs like fireworks. I drop my head back to the ground with a growl, pressing my forehead hard against the hard brown earth beneath me, grinding my skull against it for a few moments as if to drive the headache away. More sensations start coming back to me. More specifically, pain, lots and lots of pain; in my wrists, in my shoulder blades, in my back, everywhere. My jaw hurts like a motherfucker, like it's been violently forced open, and I realise that this is because it has; there's a bundle of some sort of fabric shoved into my mouth, fastened around my head so tightly it feels like my head is being squeezed. I try to lift my hands up, to pull the gag from my mouth, but I can't, physically can't – they're tied behind my back, straining my shoulder blades to a agonisingly uncomfortable degree, and the fabric tying my hands together is bound against one of the bars of the cage. The fabric chafes against the bare skin at my wrists, like being given one long Indian burn.

_What the fuck is happening_. _What the fuck happened_.

I force myself into an upright position, which is a lot harder and takes a lot longer than it should; it feels like someone is attempting to push two screws through my skin and into my brain, and the ache in my arms flares up in agony as I try to move upright. By the time I'm sat up, my head is pounding, to the extent that I'm sure I can physically feel my forehead pulsating, and I'm pretty sure I've burnt some of the skin off of my wrists. I look around, resting my head against the surprisingly warm bars behind me so I don't have to prop my head up entirely by myself. There are more cages to the right of me, each of them made with the same sturdy bamboo surrounding me. There are at least two people I can see in the cage next to me, a good few feet away from this cage. One of them is propped up against the cage, a man, a youngish looking man; his shoulders shake frantically as he quietly sobs, staring sightlessly up at the sky above him. The other is slumped against the floor, face smushed against the ground like he passed out sitting up and just slammed to the floor. His complexion is a sickly gray-white, decorated with dozens of angry purpling bruises, and it… it doesn't look like he's breathing.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit_.

I turn my head away, looking to my left now for something else to look at.

My heart nearly stops.

JD.

He's sitting in the corner of the cage, upright, his head lolled against his head in drowsy unconsciousness. His mop of messy brown hair looks filthy, like he's been rolling around in mud, and there's a purple bruise flowering up just under his right eye. Speaking from experience, somebody must have hit him pretty fucking hard. I wonder if my face looks like that. Everything hurts, so it's kind of hard to judge for myself. Other than that, he looks fine, moderately unharmed and, most importantly, alive. However, there's also the thick white strip of fabric tied around his head, shoved into his mouth so that he's biting down on it, even in sleep. That must be what I've got in my mouth too. Jesus, I hope it's not from some hillbilly's fucking shirt. _Oh fuck, _now all I can think of is hillbillies and fucking _Deliverance_. Oh fuck, I'm going to get gang-raped by a bunch of mutated hillbillies. _Oh fuck, _what if I've already been gang-raped by hillbillies?!

I can feel my breathing start getting quicker as more and more thoughts start pouring into my brain, sending me into a light-headed panic. I start yanking at my binds, hoping for a Hulk show of strength to possess me so I can tear them off and get us the fuck out of here. It hurts my wrists so badly my eyes start tearing up, but I bite down hard on the gag and start rubbing my binds against the bar behind me, hoping to weaken it enough to tear it off. I strain my hearing as I work, trying to listen out for a guard or something wondering past; all I can hear is my frantic heartbeat pounding insistently against my eardrums, faint but raucous laughter and a crackling sound, like fire, like somebody's hosting a barbeque somewhere vaguely close by. I can feel liquid on my hands and I am now positive that I'm bleeding.

After a while, just as I can start to feel the fabric around my wrists start to loosen, voices suddenly start getting louder, slowly at first and then they start increasing drastically. _Guards. Somebody's coming_.

I freeze completely; even my heartbeat seems to skid to a halt.

_Shit. Shit shit shit. What do I do, what do I do?!_

The rope doesn't feel loose enough for me to slip my hands through and the voices are getting closer and closer by the second. _Oh shit, what the fuck do I do?!_

I look over at JD, his head still slumped against his dirtied purple shirt in blissful unconsciousness, and then I look to my right, at the people in the other cage. The guy on the floor still hasn't moved so much as an inch, and the crying man is still crying, but quieter now, like he's purposefully trying to smother his weeping. Not wanting to attract himself any attention.

_Smart guy_.

I lean back against the bars and try to keep my hands as still as possible, letting my eyes slide nearly to a close, leaving only a sliver left open. I can hear the voices, now so loud they're probably no more than ten feet away from me, but I can't actually make out any words: all I can hear is the throbbing of my heartbeat in my ears and an angry white noise buzzing in the back of my skull. I try to slow down my breathing, to make it look like I'm still knocked out, but it's not working too well. I'm praying they don't pay me that close attention.

"Aw, Christ. What the fuck is this now?"

I flinch at the sound of the voice and force myself to keep my eyes mostly closed. I can feel my breathing start to speed up again. _He's so close_.

Through the sliver of vision I've allowed myself, I can see two guys standing in front of the cage next to us; I note, with a feeling of sheer, overwhelming relief, that neither of them are looking our way. _Thank Christ_. One of them, the one carrying the _huge motherfucking machete_ _in his fucking hands_, is wearing a dark red vest and a pair of black trousers, a black bandana wrapped around the bottom half of his face, a thick pair of aviator glasses largely obscuring the top half. He looks exactly how you'd expect an African militia soldier to look, _exactly._ Which is just fucking _perfect_. It takes me a minute to look away from him and focus on the other guy. Or, more accurately, away from his big-ass machete. I can't see much without opening my eyes wider, but I swear to God it looks like the jagged edge of the machete, like a row of shark's teeth, is stained with large splotches of copper. It doesn't exactly taking a fucking genius to figure out what exactly he's been doing with the fucking thing.

The other guy looks totally out of place; nice black jeans, an expensive looking chequered shirt, an expensive looking cell phone clutched in the palm of one hand. His hair is cropped short, almost exactly like mine, and he's a big guy. Not football-player type like me, but Shane-like – a guy who works out because he wants to, who fits in it as part of his routine. Who the fuck is this guy?

He crouches down next to the cage and tuts disapprovingly. "He's dead, isn't he? He's fucking _dead_, isn't he!" He stands up quickly and runs his free hand through his dark hair, cursing in a language I don't understand. His accent isn't American, or English, but he's got an extremely good grasp of the language. I can't quite place his accent and, to be honest, wouldn't be all that much help in trying to guess – I've been out of America once in my entire life. And that was to Canada. Not exactly a big leap.

"I said, I _specifically said_, I'm a reasonable guy, I'll let you fuck around with them a bit, just, y'know, don't _fucking do too much damage_. And what, may I ask, is this?"

The militia-looking guy shifts his weight awkwardly. "Too much?" he answers back timidly. His accent is thicker, much stronger than the other guy. English is nowhere near his first language.

The other guy throws his hands up wildly in frustration. "Too – fucking – much! Sadistic bunch of fucks. How the fuck am I supposed to sell a corpse?! Huh?! Who the fuck am I gunna sell a corpse to, huh?! You know what?!" he shrieks, turning around and shouting at nobody in particular. His voice is so loud it's like he's got his face right up close to mine. "_You fucking broke him?! You fucking __**buy **__him, assholes_!"

He finishes screaming and lets out a short breath, composing himself. He looks over at Militia Man; now I can't see a big portion of his face, but any man in his right state of mind should be absolutely fucking terrified right about now. "Speaking of which: who did this?" he asks calmly, like he's asking his children which one of them broke into the cookie jar. Militia Man shifts uncomfortably again. I wonder how often he has to patrol around with this psycho. He starts stuttering, offering portions of words for a few moments, before the other man waves him off with a groan. "Of course I know who fucking did it, you idiot. Fucking _Vaas_," he mutters under his breath, turning away from his soldier pal and facing in my direction, running a hand through his hand again and letting out a very carefully controlled breath. Is he their boss? Trying to get control over them? He ain't no normal henchmen, that's for sure.

He looks my way then, like dead-on meets my eyes, and I'm suddenly aware of the fact that my eyes are wide open, staring at him unashamedly. I'm not even sure when that happened. _Fuck_.

He doesn't say anything for a minute or so, just stares unblinkingly at my face. I return his gaze uncertainly, the panicked feeling in my gut swelling up so badly that I can feel my hands start to shake. The last time I remember being this scared was when Shane got into a fight with a guy in a bar last year, a guy who happened to have a switchblade tucked into his belt; sitting with Shane in the ambulance to the hospital, watching blood spread across his shirt and the colour leech from his naturally bronzed skin, was the single most terrifying night of my existence, not knowing if he was going to live or die. This isn't even remotely close to that panic. This is about a hundred times worse.

After a moment, the guy walks over to our cage and crouches down slowly, a worryingly blank expression on his face, stooping only meters away from me. I'm not good with ages generally, but he looks like he's about mid-thirties, with black hair and a spatter of dark stubble around his jaw. He's quite bland looking, no real distinguishing features at all, except for his eyes; his eyes are a startling shade of blue, so ridiculously blue it's almost unnatural looking. It makes me feel almost sick to look at him directly. They're like robot eyes.

He leans over then, yanking the piece of fabric downwards out of my mouth, and I nearly gag on the rush of air flooding through my open lips. There's an awful coppery taste left over in my mouth and I swallow a few times, trying to rid myself of it. _Jesus_. It's even worse than that post-drinking taste you get in your mouth the morning after.

He looks at me for a little longer and then he speaks. "What's your name?"

I look nervously from him to his militia buddy, who has followed him curiously over to our cage. The fact that I can't see any expressive feature on his face scares me. I look back at the other guy. I swallow. I briefly consider making up a name, but quickly crush down that idea – no doubt they'll have all my stuff, ID included. I highly doubt this guy doesn't actually know who I am. "John," I say, and my voice is so hoarse it nearly comes out as a whisper. I clear my throat, stick my chin up and look him dead in his creepy, creepy eyes. "John McCarthy."

The man doesn't nod, or smile, or even blink. He just keeps staring. His eyes roam over my face, and I get the sudden, awful realisation that he's evaluating me, calculating how much I'm worth.

_How the fuck am I supposed to sell a corpse_?!

Selling us. He's planning to sell us.

Jesus Christ.

"Well, Jonathan McCarthy," the man says, reaching into his back pocket and prying out two passports. _My passport and JD's_. He opens one of them, flicks it open and then looks back at me, a small smile on his lips. "Jonathan David McCarthy of Pasadena, California: my name is Dwight Volker. And I own you."

I blink at him rapidly. _Oh, Jesus fucking Christ_.

"I own you… and your friend over there in the corner… and those four friends of yours that came in with you. I own everything you ever were and ever will be. Your whole life is mine to control from here on in. You do nothing without my permission, you _think _nothing without my permission, and you obey my rules. If you do exactly what I ask of you, your time here will not be unpleasant. If not, if you continue to disobey my rules and make life uncomfortable for me, I will deem you unfit for sale and I will personally make sure that the rest of your life is not a long nor pleasant one. Are we clear?"

A million things flash through my head then, most of them revolving around the one large 'holy Jesus, I'm going to die here' conundrum. The vivid image of me freeing up my hands in one strong snap and violently murdering my way out of here Rambo-style pops up in my mind only to be swiftly replaced by the much more likely possibility of me being passionately tortured to death. There's little I can do to fight them, that much I know for damn sure, especially Mr Machete over there, with his bloodstained knife and everything, when the most damage I've ever done to another human being is accidentally blow out a guy's knee playing football, but I can't… _not _do anything either. I can't sit here and be this guy's bitch.

Another voice pops up in my head. _But he'll torture you. __**Torture**__, Johnny. We've never been tortured before and, frankly, I don't want to try it_. _We obey him, we live. Simple_.

But do we _want _to? We appease this guy, he sells us onto another fucking lunatic who tortures us or does other unthinkable stuff to us, and then what? We're stuck there. Forever. Does that really sound like that the best outcome to you?

_Does __**death **__sound like a better one_?

My inner turmoil is interrupted by the man in front of me, _Dwight fucking Volker_, who leans through the bars again and raps me gently on the forehead. "Come on, Johnny. Share your answer with the class."

"Oh, go fuck yourself," I say almost before he's finished speaking. It surprises me as much as it surprises him; a momentary look of shock crosses his face before he forces it away, the blank expression washing back over his features. He shakes his head, tuts and rises, brushing his hands together. I feel so suddenly and intensely sick with fear then I actually might throw up. _What the fuck have I done_?

"Johnny, Johnny, Johnny," Volker mutters to himself, not looking at me anymore, instead choosing to focus on a spot off into the distance. "That's disappointing, that really is. Not unexpected, I gotta say, but disappointing nonetheless. I get it, though, I do; gotta go with the tough guy routine, the big man gig. It's cool, I get it. I get it, I get it, I get it. But, see, _now_, now I gotta go through the whole thing of _showing _you what's gunna happen if you keep this up, and it's just so unnecessary…" He sighs wearily, like I've really disappointed him. "I'm sorry, buddy, I am, I don't _want _to have to hurt you-"

"Don't wanna hurt the fucking product, right?" I say scathingly and I am clamp my lips shut. _Oh, for god's sake, put the fucking gag back in my mouth before I get myself killed_.

Volker blinks down at me, like he's just realised I'm still here. A small smile crosses his lips. "See, you're getting it already! Smart kid, man, smart kid. But still. Today's lesson; manners. And I'm gunna bring in a special guest to help me teach this bit, okay?" He turns to Militia Man and, with a pointed look at me, says in a loud, clear voice, "Let's go get Vaas, shall we."


	3. Chapter 3

_One more update of 2012! :D Happy New Year, everybody! _

Volker doesn't leave immediately; he leans against the side of our cage, humming some unfamiliar tune to himself as the other guy drags the heavy corpse out of the other cage, grunting and groaning with the effort. As he finishes heaving the body out, Volker lets out a low whistle and jabs his finger down at his feet. "Leave him there for a moment, would you?" he says brightly, giving his soldier friend a slap on the shoulder before ducking into the cage, his attention now fixed firmly on the sole man left. The man's sobs quickly fade away, replaced with a quick quiet muttering that I assume is coming from Volker. The soldier blocks my view of them completely, sweat glistening on his face from the effort of shifting the body over to sit right next to me; he purposefully jams the dead man's face right up against the bamboo bars by my feet, almost grinding his face against the cage. He says something to me, something that I miss entirely; I stare unseeingly down at the ground beneath my feet, my hearing strangely and suddenly muffled like I've stuck in headphones, and I feel light-headed. Ridiculously light-headed, as if somebody just sucked all the air out of my brain and I physically can't keep my head up by myself. I feel hot and cold and shivery all at once, and I seriously don't think I can feel the tips of my fingers anymore. I can't even force myself to flex my fingers to see, I can't even control my own body anymore. Is this what shock feels like? Maybe this is shock. Or maybe it's to do with the fact that I'm about to be tortured.

_Look at the man by your feet, Johnny. That isn't torture, this guy Vaas is going to __**kill you**_.

"Last chance, Johnny," I hear Volker say faintly, like I'm hearing him through a veil of water. "I can just keep Vaas in his cage if you promise to start being more polite from now on…"

_Answer him, for god's sake, and tell him what he wants to hear_, the voice in the back of my head screams desperately at me, but I can't – my lips are frozen stuck together, unmoving and unrelenting. I can barely even feel them anymore.

"If that's how you want to play it…" Volker says with a disappointed sigh, his voice drifting further and further away like it's been snatched away by the wind. I hear footsteps, heavy stomping footsteps getting further and further away from me, and a small part of my mind notes with a confusing mixture of overwhelming terror and relief that they're leaving. I think about turning my head, to confirm this belief, but my skull is a dead weight on my neck, lolling helplessly against the bars behind me.

And then, a voice, right by my ear, speaks, so close that I can feel his breath on the side of my face. It comes in clearly, like somebody readjusted the antenna, so loud that he could have been screaming.

"Good luck."

For some reason, those words shock me back into life, all feeling zipping back into my limbs as if I've just received a thousand mini electric shocks. My eyesight refocuses and I snap my head around frantically, just in time to meet Dwight Volker's terrifying blue eyes one more time before he rises, gives me a hearty clap on the shoulder, grinding his fingers into my collarbone as he does so, and then leaves, shouting something in an unfamiliar language at the soldier. He doesn't turn back to look at me as he leaves, already starting a cheerful conversation with the soldier as they disappear from sight. It's eerily quiet now in their absence. I glance over at the other cage, purposefully dragging my eyesight away from the dead body at my feet; the other guy is still alive, thankfully, but he's stopped crying. Well. Stopped crying loudly, at least – I can see him dimly from here, his whole body still shaking with powerful, racking sobs, but he's forced his lips shut, jamming them together so tightly it surely must be painful.

I allow myself one moment, one singular solitary moment, of peace, of enjoying the fact that Volker is gone and this Vaas guy isn't here yet, before I start panicking completely.

_Oh shit, oh shit shit shit, I'm going to die. I'm going to be tortured and then I'm going to die_.

I can feel tears forming in my eyes, to my absolute horror; I haven't cried in years, not since my dad left when I was little. It's something I've prided myself on, something that makes me feel strong. Feeling the tears slithering their way into my eyes sends me into even more of a panic. _I can't cry. Not now, not ever in front of these guys. No matter what happens, that ain't happening_. I hold onto that thought with a desperate ferocity. _No matter what happens, no matter what happens_.

Alright now. Stop it. Focus. Work on your hands again. Just think about getting your hands free and that's all.

I nod to nobody in particular, and then I start scraping the binds against the bars again with an increased pace, pulling hard in opposite directions to try and snap the weakening fabric. I can feel the binds getting looser and looser around my wrists, to the extent where I'm pretty sure I can yank one of my hands through the opening. I give it a try, twisting and turning my right hand, trying to pull it through; my skin scrapes against the fabric and warm liquid starts dropping onto my palm, little spots of blood. I ignore it, not even registering the pain in my mind. _Nearly there, nearly there_.

The binds slip down, no longer covering my wrist, and my heart leaps. I let out a nearly frenzied breath of relief, escaping me in a quiet moan, and I pull harder, ignoring the aching protesting pain from my shoulder.

A low groan from across the cage stops me dead. I turn around, eyes wide, to look over at a slowly wakening JD, his eyeballs shifting manically behind his eyelids, his feet beginning to push against the hard earth underneath them. I stop pulling against the binds for a moment and stare at him, my stomach clenching uncomfortably at the sight he's about to wake up to. _JD, for god's sake, man, don't wake up. Just don't wake up_.

And then, from somewhere behind me, somebody starts tutting quietly, disapprovingly. "Now what… is this?" I can feel pressure on my hands, fingers lifting them up by the frayed binds around them, and my heart stops beating. _Oh fuck fuck fuck_. "Hmmmnnnn? You planning on cutting out early? Huh?" Something touches the back of my neck, something very cold and sharp, the tip digging painfully into my skin. I can hear my heartbeat start up again in double time, slamming so urgently against my ribcage it's like it's trying to kick its way out. _Is that a knife_? "Are you bored? Have my friends not been playing with you enough, hmmmnnn?" He's so close to me, so painfully close, though his voice is quiet even from such a short distance, quiet and full of amusement. There's a small shuffling sound and then he speaks again, though not to me this time. "Have you not been playing with him enough?" Talking to others. More militia types, I fucking guarantee it. "You neglect your toys so bad, man; they get so bored they wanna walk." He shifts again, leaning back in close to me, menace leeching into his voice. "You wanna walk? You wanna _fucking walk_?!" he shouts, his tone completely changing in the space of two seconds, and the pressure on my neck increases, digging even further into my skin. There's a moment's silence, a quick pause as if he's waiting for my answer. Right now, I'm too terrified to even breathe. I'm dimly aware of the fact that my heart is beating so fast it's physically painful now, and that my whole body feels cold, clammy. _Shock_.

And then, the man behind me speaks again, his tone completely reversed again, now conversational, casual. "Okay. Okay. There you go." Somebody walks into my line of vision now, a soldier, dressed so completely like the one that was here before, it takes me a few seconds to realise that this new guy is much darker skinned, and his hair isn't cropped so tight against his skull. The soldier leans down against the bars of the cage and quickly slots a key into a lock that I hadn't previously realised was there. He swings the cage door wide open and stands to one side, leaving the exit completely free and clear.

I stare at it uncertainly. _A trick. This has gotta be a trick_.

"There you go," the man says again. "There's the fucking door."

I don't move for a moment, very well aware of the fact that the man behind me still has something pressed against my neck. I lean my head forward just a fraction, less than an inch.

The man behind me moves. The pressure from the back of my neck disappears. Only to be replaced with pressure at the front; he moves his arm forwards, yanking me backwards against the cage and holding a knife, a very fucking big knife, right in front of my throat, just about touching my skin. I freeze again. _I fucking knew it_.

"What's wrong? Hmmmnnn? Oh, you don't wanna walk now, is that it?" he asks, sounding personally offended. It's almost as if he doesn't realise he's got a knife to my throat, that if I moved even slightly forwards I'd essentially be cutting my own neck open. "That is just so fucking rude, man. That is just – so - fucking _**rude**_!" he bellows into my ear, pressing the knife even tighter against my neck. It's so hard to breathe now my breath starts coming out in little gasps. "You refused my very kind offer, and you don't even say thank you." He pauses and then leans in even closer, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. "Say thank you."

_No fucking way, you psychopath_.

He waits a few seconds for me to answer. His hand tightens around the handle of the knife, and he gives it a twist, digging the serrated edge into my throat. I can't even swallow without cutting myself. He raises his voice again, his face so close to mine that I can almost _feel _his lips moving as he speaks. "_Say __**thank you, Vaas**_." After a moment of silence, he sighs and releases pressure on the knife. He's seemingly back into a casual mood again. I can't keep up, and that unpredictability is almost worse than if I knew he was just going to straight up start screaming at me. He sighs loudly. I can feel weight on my shoulder, and I think he's leaning on me. "It's just fucking rude." He leans down further on my shoulder. "Didn't your mama ever teach you manners? Please and thank you and respect your betters? Huh?" He pauses again, perhaps waiting for me to respond. "It's okay, it's okay, I forgive you, 'coz I'm gunna teach you how you show some fucking respect around here. And," he leans in again, and I can just about make out his profile; darkly tanned skin, a neatly trimmed black goatee on his jaw, a scar above his right eyebrow running back into his hairline, and eyes so dark I can't even see any white in his eyeballs. "I'm gunna show you what happen when you show a man disrespect. When you show _me _disrespect. Okay?" he pauses again. "_Okay_?" he repeats louder, reaching over to me and giving my cheek a slap with his free hand. I'm not expecting it at all, and it stuns me, knocking the breath out of me. I still don't respond. "Hello, hello, is this thing on, can you not fucking hear me? I must be talking to my fucking self because I'm not getting a response here." He turns away from me, looking at someone behind me. "Can you hear me? 'Course you can fucking hear me." He turns back to me again, slapping my head lightly a few times. "Can you hear me now? Can you fucking hear me now?" He laughs happily, like this is the funniest thing he's ever heard. "Alright, get him out of the fucking cage."

The knife vanishes from my sight, slicing so close to my throat for a brief moment I'm not sure if he's actually caught my skin. The pressure on my back disappears too, and then a short snapping sound; my wrists drop free of their binds and I immediately snatch them forwards. The skin at my wrists is a mess, shredded and torn from where the rope has scraped my flesh off, and still-drying blood is forming a thin crust. I carefully press my thumb to the wounded area on my left hand and a searing burn immediately flares up.

The soldier standing by the door slowly pulls the machete out of his black belt and points it in JD's direction. I look over at JD, noticing for the first time that he's fully awake now: he stares back at me, eyes wide and swimming with tears, shaking his head ever so slightly. _Don't go out there_.

I look back at the man pointing the machete. There is no sliver of a doubt to me that, if instructed, he'll hurt JD. Maybe won't hurt him, since Dwight Volker wouldn't want his fucking _product _damaged, but bad enough.

_I won't let him be tortured_.

I unfurl myself from my seated position and crawl out of the cage, trying not to hiss as the tearing on my wrists drags across the ground. Everything hurts so much; I have to balance myself on the cage when I stand up, I don't trust myself to not fall over. Immediately as I stand up, two soldiers appear on either side of me, yanking my arms behind my back and forcing me onto my knees. One of them purposefully wraps his fingers around my injured wrist and it's all I can do to keep myself from screaming in pain.

"Let's get a good look at you."

I look up to see Vaas towering over me, staring down at me with sadistic amusement glinting in his black eyes. He's dressed like the soldiers are, in the same red vest top and black trousers, though I imagine it's more likely that they're dressed to emulate him. The vest top he's wearing shows off part of his chest and he seems to have parts of his skin caved out, like somebody stabbed him dozens of times with a knife. There are scars on his head too, covering his entire skull – he has a thick black mohawk running down the center of his head, probably concealing even more scars. He has several necklaces looped around his neck, three thick strands of fabric that are the same colour as his outfit, two jet black ones and a dark red.

It's weird then; when I raise my eyes to meet his, looking up at the face of the man who is almost certainly going to kill me, his face completely changes. He goes from having a dark smirk on his face to staring down at me like he's seen a ghost – all the colour leeches from his face and he actually staggers back a step, running his hands over his head. His eyes widen, showing a glimmer of white amongst all the black, and he genuinely looks like he's about to scream, all the while staring unblinkingly at my face.

And then he laughs. Starts laughing like a maniac, high-pitched and loud and hysterical.

_What the fuck_?

The soldiers on either side of me exchange curious glances, which doesn't make me feel better at all. _This _is what freaks them out? This must be new for even them. _Shit_.

Suddenly, his laughter stops, and he lurches forward, grabbing my face with both of his hands and pushing his face right up close to mine. He's all I can see now, two dark eyes as endlessly black as oil. His hands shake slightly and his pupils are _huge_.

_Great. He's fucking high as balls. I'm definitely going to die now_.

And then he whispers something. "Why won't you fucking die?"

_Huh_?  
I'm not expecting the first punch; he lets go of my face and hits me so quickly its almost a blur. I've been punched in the face before - it's kind of hard to avoid getting into fights when you go out drinking with Shane – but this is something else; my vision blacks out and flickers back on after a moment. I can taste blood in my mouth and my ears are ringing, shrieking like an alarm clock. I can vaguely hear Vaas shouting something at me, screaming at me with a fury I've never seen before, but I can't entirely make it out. I spit the blood out, watching it splat against the grass beneath me.

I don't expect the second punch either, the one that knocks me out of the grasp of the guards and sends me tumbling to the floor.

After that, the other hits don't come as a surprise.

Vaas is unstoppable, levelling kicks at my stomach, at my face, at my chest. More blood fills my mouth and I almost choke on it, nearly vomiting it out of my mouth there's just so much.

"_I fucking killed you_!" Vaas roars, stamping down on my back again and again and again. "_I killed you, motherfucker, I killed you_!"

After an unknowable amount of time, he stops his attack and kicks me out onto my back, dropping down on top of me. He shoves his knee into my stomach and presses his hands against my face again. I can barely even see him anymore: he keeps blurring into two separate people, two Vaas' staring down at me with wonder. Black spots swell up in my vision and I fight not to drop into unconsciousness.

"Jason, Jason, Jason," Vaas whispers fervently, fearfully. He looks me right in the eye, still murmuring the name Jason over and over again. "Jason, Jason, Jason." A smile appears on his face then, an almost happy smile. "You motherfucker."

He stands up then, still smiling cheerfully.

And then he levels a kick straight at my head.

Everything goes black.


	4. Chapter 4

_Hi, everyone! Hope everyone had a good New Year, and that 2013 treats you all wonderfully. :) _

_Enjoy!_

"Jonathan?"

I hear my name echo faintly around me, like I'm lying in a tunnel. I try to turn my head, to see where the voice is coming from, but even just trying to move an inch makes my head throb so hard I'm almost positive my head is about to split in two. Even just breathing hurts, as if my lungs have filled with fire. _What the fuck happened to me_.

"John?"

The voice is a lot closer now, painfully close; an image flashes into my head then, of a dark skinned man with a black mohawk and nearly pitch black eyes, and my whole body rocks with a flinch, trying even in semi-unconsciousness to get away. My eyelids snap open, and the whole world is just a blinding bright white blur - everything is fuzzy, like television static, and I can just about make out the vague shape of a man standing over me, his face hovering about a meter away from mine. My breath leaves me in a short, sharp gasp and life spreads back into my limbs. I bend my knee and slam my foot into the man's chest, sending him reeling backwards into a small black office chair; he trips and sprawls backwards over it, toppling the chair over and landing on his back.

I blink hard, trying to clear my vision, but it doesn't work. I plant my hands down on either side of me and feel something soft, a bedsheet. I look back up again, squinting uncertainly over at the figure squirming around on the floor, trying to readjust himself. I push myself off of the bed and step slowly to the right, keeping my back against the bed frame and my eyes on the man in front of me. "Stay away from me," I hiss, blinking rapidly, trying desperately to get rid of the nauseating blur in my vision. The man on the floor sits up and looks over at me, his face just a pale beige swirl. I note with relief that it's not the other guy, _not Vaas_, but it doesn't help me much. _Where is Vaas, what happened to Vaas? What happened to me? What did he do to me?!_

I feel a sudden wrenching pain in my arm, twisting my arm behind my back uncomfortably, and I stop moving. For the first time, I notice that I'm shirtless, wearing only the jeans I'd been wearing before; I look long enough to notice the blood drying on my skin, and I look away quickly. There's something clamped around my wrist, something strong and painfully tight. I reach behind my back with my free hand, patting blindly until my fingers brush over something thick and wiry, stretching from my hand over to the frame of the bed, secured carefully to one of the rusting bronze poles. _Rope. They tied me to the fucking bed_.

There's a scraping noise from across the room, and I refocus my attention, glowering angrily over at the man attempting to pick himself back up again. I readjust my position, moving so that the rope isn't digging into my skin. "Where am I?" I ask in a low snarl, looking around in a hopefully subtle manner for a weapon. The room around me is a bleached white wood, small, and consisting of the bed, the chair, and an old light brown desk covered in scattered papers and dozens of thick black satchels, like the type you'd expect a diabetic person to carry around with them in case of emergencies. There's a small metal table next to me, with a small silver tray on top holding an empty needle and several yards of dirty white bandaging. _A doctor's office. This is their doctor's office. _I look back at the man, who I assume is the doctor. _Why are they fixing me up? Can't sell damaged products, is that it_?

"Who are you?" I ask quietly, looking unblinkingly at his face; his features are slowly becoming clearer and clearer, but everything is still so fucking blurry it makes my head hurt. The man doesn't answer for a moment; he's still half crouched, looking up at me like you'd look at a dog that's gone rabid. A sharp pain shoots through my head like a volt of electricity, and I press my hand to my forehead, briefly fantasising about digging my nails through my skull to squash the pain between my fingers. The guy makes a move toward me, opening his mouth to speak, and I snap my hand out again, fighting against the nearly crippling pain in my head to keep him away. He pauses, eyeing me worriedly. "_Who the fuck are you_?!" I almost scream, curling my hand into a fist and digging my fingernails into my hand hard enough that the sting of my nails breaking through my skin distracts from the fucking agony in my brain.

The guy swallows nervously. When he speaks, he sounds a little wheezy. _Too fucking right_. "My… my name is Nat Jefferson. I'm… I'm the doctor," he says angrily, like he can't quite believe it himself. "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm trying to fix you."

"Fix me?" I spit out, furiously. "Fucking _fix me_? So what, so you can fucking sell me off, is that it? Fuck you, _stay the fuck away from me_," I shout as he edges closer again. "You hear me, _stay the fuck back_."

"Would you shut up?!" Jefferson snaps, lowering his voice and looking around nervously, towards the only door out of here. He looks back at me. "'Coz if I can hear you, you better be damn fucking sure that the guards outside can hear you too. And I've got this crazy fucking suspicion that you don't want them in here, do you want to know why?" I don't answer him. "More importantly, you wanna know who tried to get in here earlier?"

_Vaas_.

"Judging by the look on your face, I think you know who I mean. I can almost certainly guarantee that he's waiting outside _right now_, prowling around like a caged animal just waitin' to be let loose, so I'm gunna ask you once more to shut the fuck up and let me take care of you, or Volker will march in here, drag you out and drop you at Vaas' feet. We clear?"

I growl under my breath for a few minutes, scowling at his face so hard my face hurts; eventually, I let myself collapse back down on the bed, sat upright this time, propping my back against the wall and staring suspiciously at him as he slowly approaches me. He picks the chair back up into its rightful position and flops down into it, staring back at me with about as much trust as I'm showing him.

We glare at each other for a few moments longer before he leans over to the small table and picks up a small, clear bottle filled with what I'll go ahead and assume is water, as well as a handful of bandages. He looks back at me and shakes each hand at me. "Now. Can I?"

"By all means," I drawl back, gesturing at my bruised and battered body. He pours the water on the bandages and starts dabbing at my chest.

Turns out I was wrong. It wasn't water.

I press a hand to my mouth to stop myself from shrieking. Jefferson doesn't say anything to me, and I don't offer anything back. For a moment at least.

Then, when I'm sure that I can speak without my voice breaking, I turn to meet his eyes. My vision is almost completely clear now, save for a few hazy spots; he's an older guy, whitening salt-and-pepper hair and tired blue eyes lined with dozens of wrinkles, and he's dressed in filthy clothes, a gray t-shirt that hadn't used to be that colour and jeans covered in dark stains, like he hasn't changed out of them in weeks.

Looking at him then, it hits me. He's as much a prisoner as I am.

I clear my throat, drawing his attention. "How bad is it?"

He doesn't answer me for a moment, busying himself with his work.

When he does speak, his voice is grave. "Bad enough they sent you here."

"They don't usually take… people like me here?"

He snorts through his nose humourlessly. "Kiddo, they send two types of people to me: the nearly dying and the dying. You fit the first category. Got to make sure you're fit for packaging."

I laugh quietly. "I fucking thought so."

We don't talk for a few more moments; he works silently while I listen to the outside world. Crickets and a crackling fire and low murmuring voices. _Vaas is outside. Right outside, Jefferson said it himself. And he's been trying to get in here. Trying to get to you._

"By the way," Jefferson says, leaning back in his chair and tossing the used bandages in the trash can behind him. I catch a glimpse of them, covered in crusty copper, and my stomach heaves. "That's a good fucking kick you've got on you." He studies my face for a second. "You a soccer player?"

"Football."

"Professional?"

"Er, yeah. I'm a… a middle linebacker."

"Yeah? You any good?"

"Yeah… yeah, I… I…"

He stops working and leans back, a knowing look in his face. His face is all blurry again, but I know why this time; tears cloud my vision and I can't breathe, my chest shaking so violently it hurts. I've had something like this before, when someone shoved their shoulder straight into my gut and all the air just disappeared from me like I'd been deflated, but this is different. This is grief, grief so strong I can feel it wrapped around my heart like a vice. _I'm never going to play football again. I'm never going to have my life again, see my mom, see everybody back home, go on to play football professionally, fall in love… I have nothing now.._

I force the tears back, running my hands through my hair and pulling at the strands so hard I can feel some of them yanked free. I press my head against my knees and I try to breathe, try to regain control of myself. _So this is what it feels like to go mad_.

A hand on my knee then, warm and gentle. Then a voice, broken and quiet.

"I know, kid. I know."

"How do you stand this?" I ask, not lifting my head up. My voice doesn't sound like my own. "How can you fucking bear it?"

Silence for a few moments.

"I've found ways to forget."

I look up. Jefferson's head is bowed, staring down at his hands.

"How?" I ask, in a voice barely above a whisper.

He shakes his head vehemently, looking up at me with surprisingly angry eyes. "Not for you. Not with Vaas hanging around outside just waiting for a moment to slip through." He leans closer, eyes urgent, pleading. "The moment you lose control is the moment he owns you forever."

"He already owns me," I say back, getting angrier and angrier. "I have _no control_, I have _nothing_! What else could he _fucking do_ to me?!"

Jefferson's eyes darken. "You have no idea what that man is capable of. You have no idea what he does, day in and day out, to these people. There are more ways to own people than to just control their physical selves." He pauses for a moment and then looks away, his voice hollow. "And you, of all people, do not want to find out."

I frown, the building rage lifting for a moment. Me of all people?

"What do you mean, me of all people?"

Jefferson doesn't move for a moment, seemingly not even breathing as he looks at his hands again.

And then he jerks back into life with a shudder, picking up more bandages with a mechanical stiffness and getting back to work.

I look at him, pleading for understanding, and he doesn't meet my eyes.

When he does speak, it almost makes me jump it's so sudden. "What was the last thing you remember before you woke up here?"

I frown, not wanting to relive that particular moment. I wonder if it's a trick question somehow. "Vaas. More specifically, Vaas kicking the shit out of me," I reply, unable to stop the sarcasm leaking into my voice.

"Do you remember… what he was saying… as he attacked you?"

_I killed you! I fucking killed you, motherfucker!_

"He… he said that he'd killed me. He kept saying he'd killed me, I don't-" I stop abruptly as something else hits me. I look at Jefferson with dawning horror. "He kept calling me Jason. Kept saying Jason, over and over and over again."

Jefferson's hands shake as they dab at my wounds.

I'm suddenly terrified to ask my next question. I open my mouth to speak and the words die on my tongue. I clear my throat and try again, hating the wobble in my voice as I speak. "Doc, who's Jason?"

Jefferson sets down the vodka and the bandages and picks up a small, nearly blunt needle and dim white thread. I take one look at this and my stomach rolls.

_Oh, Jesus, oh Christ_. _Oh, fuck me, fuck fuck fuck fuck, I fucking hate fucking needles_.

The whole world swims in front of me.

"Jason was like you." The doc's voice sounds a little faint. I struggle to focus, trying not to think about the needle, or the sharp tugging sensation on my chest. "He came here about-"

"Doc, I really want to hear this story, but I also really, really need to throw up now, please," I say quickly, closing my eyes and trying to focus on staying upright. I hear a shuffling noise, the doctor pushing his chair away, and then something large and round and metal is thrust into my hands. "Fire away, kiddo."

"That's very kind of you," I say weakly.

And then I throw up.

I can hear the doctor laughing in the background. "Big fucking tough guy football player, and he can't even look at a fucking needle."

I lift my right hand and give him the finger, making him laugh even more.

He waits for me to finish heaving my empty guts up, sitting politely in front of me like I'm a particularly interesting TV show. I look up meekly, and slowly put the can on the floor. He smirks back at me.

"Continue," I say, in a small voice. "_Not with the needle_!" I shout as he leans forward again, hurriedly lowering my voice when he shoots me a panicked look. "I meant with the story. Not with the needle."

He sighs exasperatedly. "John, I'm going to need to use the fucking needle so you don't get an infection."

I eye the needle point warily. "I think, if you use that thing, you're gunna give me a fucking infection anyway."

"Well. It'll be a better infection."

"I don't really think you can get a _better-_"

"Look, just man up,_ shut_ up and let me work, alright?"

I press my lips together and give him a grave nod. He rolls his eyes as he leans forward, but doesn't say anything else about it.

I look over his shoulder, focusing on the front door as he talks. _I wonder how far away Vaas is_. _How close he is right now_.

"Jason was a prisoner here too, like I said, about a year ago, back when Dwight's older brother Hoyt was running the place, right before I came here. Long story short: Jason escapes this place and sets about ruining their entire operation, taking back their outposts and killing their guys and what have you, all the while trying to get his friends back. Naturally, he becomes a pest, so Hoyt tells Vaas to kill Jason, and kill him quick. I don't know if you hadn't guessed, but quick ain't exactly Vaas' style, but he still gives it a go – tries to set him on fire, tries to drown him, he even fucking shoots the kid in the heart, and it still doesn't do the trick."

"How is that possible?" I ask through gritted teeth.

"God knows. Some of the guys around here, they talk about Jason being blessed by the god of the natives or some shit like that, I don't know. Maybe he was just really fucking lucky. But, still. Jason then comes after Vaas and manages to fuck him up pretty good. Stabbed him about a dozen times."

_The scars on his chest_.

"And he would've died… had I not found him."

I look back at Jefferson, startled. "What?"

He doesn't meet my eyes. "I found him, in his compound, dying. Thought he was just a regular guy and did… did my best to save him." He laughs darkly under his breath. "Aren't I just a… a fucking stand up guy?"

I don't say anything. I'm not about to give him any fucking sympathy.

"So, yeah," Jefferson says, gravely. "Now… Vaas is under the assumption that you… are Jason. Back to haunt him."

"Did you ever see this Jason guy? Do I look anything like him?"

"I don't think you have to… if Vaas was bad before Jason Brody, he is even worse afterwards." He stops again, his expression mournful. "He has been… attacking some of the other captives. Taking his tortures too far…" he stops again and looks me dead in the eye. "Killing them."

My blood runs cold and I can just picture the lifeless man in the cage next to us. _Oh my god, where are the others? I need to find the others_.

"He is a monster, John, nothing short of a demon in human form. And now, it seems he has set his sights on you."

_Well. Ain't that fucking great_.

"And I don't suppose I could just tell him I'm not Jason Brody?"

"Unsurprisingly enough, no."

"And there's no stopping him?"

"… No."

"Great. Ain't that just… fan-fucking-tastic," I sigh, closing my eyes as a wave of exhaustion hits me, mixed in with a dull aching pain. I feel tired right through to my bones. "Doc, I don't suppose you could give me a little something to help me sleep?" Jefferson eyes me suspiciously. "Just to tell me sleep, please."

He studies my face carefully for a moment.

He sighs, and walks over to the desk, opening one of the satchels and producing a needle. "Just to sleep. Nothing else, you hear?"

"I got you."

He walks back over and I hold my arm out obediently, trying to ignore the lurch in my stomach at the sight of the needle.

"Just this once?" he says. His voice is so much louder now that I've closed my eyes.

"Got it."

(...)

I open my eyes groggily, my head thick and fuzzy with sleep. I stare up at the ceiling. Still in the doctor's office at least. There's little to no light outlining the door outside, so it must be late. Then again, I'm not sure what time I clocked out. Or what time it was when I woke up in the cage. Fuck. I'm not sure of anything anymore.

A head appears then, hovering over mine, and for one moment I don't recognise the face staring down at mine.

Then it hits me.

"Hello, Jason. Did you miss me?"


	5. Chapter 5

Vaas towers over me, a slowly growing smirk spreading across his lips as he stares down at my face. His black eyes are wild and they don't stop moving, roaming restlessly over my features as he grins down at me. His whole body seems to be shaking, like he's taken a shot of adrenaline, and the small part of my mind still capable of conscious thought cheerfully remarks that he's probably got something a lot more dangerous in his system.

The larger part of my mind, however, has just completely shut down, along with all control over my body. I'm vaguely aware of scrambling backwards on the bed, clawing frantically at the sheets underneath me as I try and get as far away from him as possible in this small space, and I can feel the dim jolt of my heart performing a manic dance in my chest, but it feels like I've taken a step back, behind the camera, and I'm watching all this happen on a television screen.

_How did he get in here?! I thought there were guards, where are the fucking guards?! Where's the doc?! Oh, shit, where's fucking Jefferson?!_

"What is it, Jason? What is it, what's wrong?" Vaas asks excitedly, leaning even closer to me; he puts one of his hands on the wall behind my head, slamming so hard against the wood that it shakes. I try to look behind him, to see if Jefferson's at least _alive_, but I can only see Vaas. _Oh Jesus, what's happened to Jefferson?_

Vaas notices me trying to look around him, and the smile slips from his face. "Are you not happy to see me, Jason; did you not want to see me? Huh? Because I fucking wanted to see you, amigo. I fucking wanted to see you, motherfucker. It's been a long time, hermano. A really long fucking time." He pauses and studies me, taking in the collage of purpling bruises and dried blood covering my body and my face, and a smile blooms on his face again, like he's fucking _proud _of himself. He laughs quietly. "You look like shit, by the way." And, just like that, he stops smirking again, a completely serious expression washing over his face. His dark eyes shine earnestly, like he's trying to communicate something of vital importance to me. "And I apologise for that. Okay, I apologise. Look at my face, you can see I'm fucking serious, right man? I'm not fucking with you, I swear to God, man. But, hey, look man, look," he gestures at his own chest now, at the dozens of scars forming an almost jigsaw-puzzle type pattern on his dark skin. I drag my gaze helplessly down to his chest, taking in the souvenirs of all the fights he's been in and feeling so completely and utterly helpless. _I wonder which one was done by Jason_.

I look back up at him. He beams down at me. "We fucking match now. You see this, you remember this?" He points at one particularly large scar, still red and raw even though it's long since healed over, and jabs at it vehemently a few times. He waits a moment, as if giving me the opportunity to laugh and be all like '_oh, that one! well, of course I remember that one_!'. When I don't response, still petrified by fear, his smile fades away, replaced by a rapidly darkening growl. "Huh? Do you _fucking remember this_?" he screams, lurching forward and pressing his face close to mine again; it doesn't even look like he's breathing. Being this close to him makes me feel empty inside. Sick and empty. "You killed me, Jason," he whispers softly, not taking his eyes off of mine for a moment. "You fucking killed me, man."

"I'm not Jason," I hear myself gasp out hoarsely. I start gabbling desperately, hoping he'll understand. _Why can he not see I'm not Jason, how he can not tell!?_ "I'm not Jason, I'm not-"

"Shush, shushshushshushshush," he says, waving his hand in front of my face. "Shut up. And listen. I fucked up, okay, I fucked up last time. And, again, I must apologise. Okay? I promise you, I promise you here and now that similar mistakes will not be made again. Okay?" He pauses again, waiting for me to respond. Does he honestly expect me to start casually chatting away with him, being like this? How the hell did Jason fucking Brody talk to him?! What does he expect of me, of _Jason_? I clamp my lips tightly shut, knowing that anything that comes out of my mouth will undoubtedly be the wrong thing for me to say. There is no right thing to say to this man. "You fucking listening to me, you prick?!" he shouts again, pushing his face up close again. "Huh?! You listening? Are you listening to me, Jason?!"

"_I'm not Jason, you fucking psychopath!_" I spit back, a sudden burst of anger flowing out of me. Every rational part of me is begging me not to continue, but I can't control myself. I glower up at Vaas with raw hatred, hatred I've never felt before. I make a point of not hating people, but this… this is a right fucking exception. "_Can you hear me, are __**you **__listening to __**me**__?! _My name is John, John McCarthy, you _fucking __**nutjob**_, and-"

Vaas leans down then, lightening quick, and pops back up, a gun in hand, small and sleek and black, jamming it under my chin; my heart very nearly stops all together as I catch sight of the gun, and my voice cuts off into a dry gasp. I've never seen a gun before in real life and, for some reason, weird thoughts keep popping into my head: like, it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be, for some weird reason, and the barrel of the gun is strangely cold, icy cold for such a warm climate.

_Don't focus on the fact that it could blow your head off in a second, dumbass_.

Vaas rests his index finger on the trigger, a calm blank look in his eyes as he observes me. "I'm sorry, what were you saying? Hmmmnnn? Would you like to repeat what you were saying, so I can hear it again? Huh? _Say it again, say it again motherfucker, say it again_!" he stops shouting again and leans back, relaxing the pressure on the gun while still keeping it trained on my face. "See, you're like a dog, amigo. A fucking dog. I let you run around with your balls still attached, I let you off the leash long enough for you to start fucking with everything in sight. And that's my bad, hermano. I should've cut your balls off straight away." He stops talking, a very disturbing curious glint in his eye. He cocks his head to the side and narrows his eyes, grinning. He reaches behind his back and pulls out a machete, a _fucking big machete_. I meet his eyes again and it becomes all apparent where he's going with this.

_Oh, holy mother of fuck, no_.

"Let's see if we can't correct that mistake, eh?"

He leans forward, the machete shining in the low light; I try to lash out at him, going to kick at him, only to find that somebody's tied my ankles to the bed while I was unconscious. I pull frantically at them, hoping to somehow snap them loose before Vaas can cut my fucking balls off. He points the machete forward, letting it tap once against my bare stomach, and the touch of the uncomfortably warm steel sends me into a frenzy: my vision turns vaguely red at the edges, like I'm seeing through a milky veil of blood, and I can hear myself snarling at Vaas with such violence it frightens me. I mean, I smack talk and everything during games or when somebody tries to start a fight in a bar, but this is genuinely, horrifically vicious. I don't recognise my own voice.

Vaas lifts the machete back up and puts down the gun, tossing it casually on the floor before he turns back to me, an exasperated look on his face, like I'm a particularly difficult child he's trying to teach. "Would you _please – stop?!_ This requires a lot of concentration, and I would _appreciate _a certain degree of cooperation, okay?" He leans forward again, his fingers at the button of my jeans, and I feel a flash of panic so intense I'm half convinced I just had a heart attack.

"Jesus Christ, Jesus _fucking Christ, get the __**fuck **__away from me, you __**fucking psycho**_!"

Abruptly, as if taking my hysterical shrieking into consideration, he leans back, machete dropped to the floor with a noisy clatter. I gulp in air hungrily, gasping and staring at Vaas with wide eyes. _Is this a trick? _

And then he starts giggling, chuckling to himself like my expression is the funniest thing he's ever seen in his life. I stare at him as he laughs. _This man isn't just on-drugs fucked up, he is fucking __**out of his fucking mind**_.

"Oh, Jason. Jason, Jason, Jason, you should've seen the look on your face, man, that was fucking priceless. That was beautiful, man, thank you for that," he giggles one last time and sighs, happily. And then, in another complete mood change, his face clouds over. _Serious mode again_. "Now listen to me, you fucking prick. Fucking Volker Junior might think he's the one with the fucking dick around here, but he doesn't know you like I know you, does he, Jason? As far as you and I are concerned… _I _own you. You hear me?! _I – own – you_. And we are gunna pick up right where we left off. Only this time, Jason, this time, I won't be so fucking nice… if you so much as step _one fucking toe out of line_, I will cut your fucking balls off. I will cut your fucking balls off and I will keep cutting you up until you start playing along."

He moves in again, so close that our faces are only inches apart. One of his hands goes to my chin, grasping so hard that it's painful. There's literally nowhere else for me to look now. Then again, looking away from him is proving to be impossible, mainly because I have the horrible feeling that, should I take my eyes away for a second, he'll be reaching for the machete again. His voice is soft now. "Do you understand me, Jason?"

_My name is not fucking Jason, you fucking psychopath_.

"Jason, do you understand me?"

_I can't convince him I'm not Jason. It's never going to happen. He'll never believe it_.

I swallow hard and force the words out of my mouth. "I understand," I say, looking away as I say it, desperate not to look at his face anymore. I hear Jefferson's voice in my head, quiet desperation. _There are more ways to own people than to just control their physical selves_.

_I won't let that happen_.

His fingers tighten around my chin. "Look me in the fucking eye when you talk to me. Say it again."

I drag my gaze upwards to meet his. I've never felt hatred quite as strong as I do right now.

I grit my teeth. "I understand."

He smiles slowly at me, not releasing my face from his grip. "Good boy, Jason, good man. Now, am I gunna have to cut your balls off, or are you going to be good for me?"

_No. No fucking way. No. __**Fuck you,**__ Vaas_.

A high pitched, hysterical voice pops up in the back of my mind. _Dude, what about your fucking balls?! You need your fucking balls, man! You can't let him take your fucking balls, man!_

Vaas drums his fingertips on my face. "Come on, Jason…"

_We can't._

_**Think about your balls, you fucking moron! Your balls!**_

I refocus on Vaas' face. That fucking smirk.

_No._

"My name," I spit out. "Is _Jonathan McCarthy_. And you can go straight to hell."

Vaas doesn't reply for a moment. His face doesn't even change; he blinks calmly and studies my face, tapping his fingertips on my face a few more times.

And then he sighs.

The punch comes too quick for me to see again, so hard that my head hits the wall behind me with a sickening thud. _This guy is too fast for me to fight back_. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, and there's a dull copper taste in my mouth, and a pressure at my navel. I shake my head and try to focus.

_Focus, you fucking idiot, he's about to cut your fucking balls off_!

I lift my knee up hard, slamming it into Vaas' face; he staggers back, one hand on his face, a stream of words coming out of his mouth in a deafening roar.

When he removes his hand and looks back at me, the expression on his face isn't human. The anger on his face isn't even remotely human.

He lurches forward, machete clutched so tightly in one hand the skin of his hand is curdled white.

_Well. I'm gunna die._

And then:

"_**Vaas**_."

Vaas staggers to a halt, the machete raised above his head. His eyes burn down into mine. I don't dare look away. _Get him away, get him away from me please_.

Dwight Volker marches into the room, a black expression on his face to rival the anger on Vaas'. He looks from the man towering above me down to my face, his frown getting deeper and deeper.

"Vaas, get the fuck out of here." Volker's voice is like steel. Vaas doesn't move. "_Vaas, get out, __**now**_."

Vaas throws the machete down, keeping his eyes on mine the entire time, and then stalks out, pausing briefly to stare down Volker.

Volker doesn't even flinch. _Why the fuck can't I do that_?

As soon as Vaas leaves the room, relief hits me so hard I could cry. I have to clench my jaw painfully tight to stop myself from crying in front of Volker. _Not in front of you, you motherfucker_.

Volker takes one look at me before he leaves. His face doesn't give anything away.

As soon as Volker leaves, locking the door behind him, darkness washes over me, pulling me into unconsciousness. I gratefully let in, clouding my brain completely.

The last thing I'm aware of is my head hitting the bed.


	6. Chapter 6

_So I'll apologise in advance - I just got back to uni, so updating will be a little more random for a while. I miss my Xbox already. D:_

_Hope you're all enjoying it and, as per usual, leave a review, or a comment, or drop me a message if the urge takes you. :)_

_Thank you!_

"You've got to get me out of here, man."

Jefferson sighs and leans back in his chair, dropping the used gauze pad drop into his lap. He studies me sadly through his good eye; the other is swollen, to the extent that I can only see a faint glimmer of color behind the rolls of pale skin, and the rest of his face isn't much better, dotted with several large and very angry black bruises. I didn't exactly need to stretch myself trying to guess just how Vaas had gotten in here last night.

Jefferson looks at me for a moment longer, and then he sighs again, louder this time, running his hands through his hair slowly. I see red marks on his knuckles, like dried blood, and I figure he at least tried to fight, to stop Vaas getting in here. It makes me feel weirdly proud.

"Kiddo…" he starts and then tears his eyes away, dropping his hands into his lap and staring down at them blankly. When he speaks again, his voice is hollow. "Kid, believe me when I say that if there was anything I could do, anything in the whole fucking world to help you, I would. But it is simply… not possible."

"So we make it possible," I reply, leaning forwards and trying to get him to look at me again. Impatience boils inside my chest like tequila, and my body feels shaky, like there's too much adrenaline bubbling in my veins. I feel like I could run a hundred laps around this room right now, it's that intense. I just need to get him to look at me, to get him to _see_. "Jefferson, we can't stay here. We can't _die _here, we can't. I won't."

"John," Jefferson says, wearily. "It's not possible. It's not. Not now. Vaas does nothing but sit outside and wait for his chance to get in here, and Volker's sitting right behind him waiting for him to make a move. You can't even stick your pinkie toe out of that door without Vaas running over to cut it off."

"Maybe now. But they've gotta move me out of here sooner or later, back to that cage I was in before. I almost got free before, I can do it again."

Jefferson doesn't say anything for a moment, simply staring down unblinkingly at his hands. I wait for him to say something, to say anything, but he stays silent, almost as unmoving as a statue.

Hesitantly, I try to spur him back to life. "There was some sort of lock on the other side of the cage door, but it wouldn't be impossible to-"

"He won't take you back to the cage."

I blink at Jefferson, confused. He doesn't look back.

"He won't?" I ask slowly. Jefferson gives a small shake of his head. "Why?" I press. No answer from the doc. The impatient feeling is growing in my chest, buzzing like a horde of particularly pissed-off bees, and I resist the urge to snarl at him. I clear my throat. "How do you know?" Still no answer. It doesn't even look like he's breathing, seemingly frozen in place. I grit my teeth. _For fuck's sake, man_. "Where then, if not the cage? Am I getting a fucking upgrade? 'Coz I've gotta say, my current accommodation is pretty fucking terrible."

"I wouldn't exactly call it an upgrade."

_Jesus fucking Christ, all of a sudden he's Mr fucking Elusive_.

"Then what would you fucking call it?!" I snap. Impatience slithers through my bones, making my whole body shake like it's the middle of winter.

Jefferson shudders back to life, reaching up to run his hands through his hair again, his movements clunky and robotic, as if he'd forgotten how to move properly. He meets my eyes fleetingly and then immediately rips them away, staring blankly down at the floor again. _What is he not telling me?_

"There's a small… cabin… not too far from here, in the center of camp. It's where he…" Jefferson stops abruptly, his face suddenly as white as bone with a sickly gray-ish tint. He looks like he's about to throw up or pass out or both at the same time, and he keeps twitching, the tips of his fingers jerking like he's receiving small electric shocks.

"Where he what?" I ask. My voice shakes uncertainly as I speak.

"Where he…" he stutters to a halt again and inhales shakily. He lifts his head up to meet my eyes and it's like looking into the eyes of a doll. Dead. Lifeless. "Where he keeps his favorites."

…

_Well that can't be good_.

"And by favorites, you mean the ones he lets run around without a leash and gives treats to?" I say, my attempt at joking ruined by the hysterical twist to my tone. Jefferson shakes his head, staring straight at me the entire time. It's an unsettling effect. I swallow hard. "When you say favorites-"

"I mean the people it amuses him the most to torture." Jefferson's voice is flat, emotionless. Like a walking corpse.

_Well whoop-de-fucking-do_.

"How many of them are there?" I hear myself ask. My voice sounds weird.

"Never more than five at a time."

"Five?" I ask in a high-pitched tone, like he's told me a particularly interesting fact about one of my favorite movies. "That's… why… I didn't think-"

"He'll have them choose tortures for each other. So they can all watch."

"Okay," I nod, my head feeling as heavy as lead on my shoulders. "Okay. And, how long does he keep them for?" My voice sounds casual, much too casual for this conversation, and this worries me.

"Until he gets bored."

"Okay, okay. And then, what happens to them?"

"He kills them."

"Okay… okay. Doesn't sell them on, or anything?"

"No."

"Why does he not-"

"Why exactly do you think?" Even when asking this question, his voice doesn't change, the delivery still as lifeless as a machine. _As dead as you're going to be_.

"Well, if I… had to guess," I say, hearing my breathing start to speed up, shallower and shallower, quicker and quicker. "I would have to say it's because he's tortured them so badly they can't be sold. Am I right?" Jefferson nods slowly. "Of course I'm right, I knew I was, that's the only… logical course of action, would you excuse me for a moment?"

I lean over to the small table next to the bed, where I can just about see a filthy silver scalpel underneath a wad of gauze pads. My fingers close around the handle and I pull it backwards towards me.

A hand closes on my wrist, wrapping its fingers around my wrist so tightly it feels like my bones are being ground into dust inside my skin.

I try tugging at my hand, trying in vain to free it, and Jefferson intensifies his grasp, crushing his fingernails into my skin.

"Jefferson, would you mind getting your hand off me, if it's not too much trouble?" I ask politely.

"What do you think you're doing?" His voice is no longer emotionless; instead, it's filled with panic, panic so intense he garbles his words as he snaps at me.

"Well, I _was _about to kill myself, so if you'd just kindly remove your hand-"

"You can't!"

"Well, no, I can't, not while you're holding onto me like that."

"_I can't_ let you kill yourself," he says in a low hiss. His eyes are wild and gleaming.

"Well, that's very kind of you and everything, but I'm afraid, _fuck you_, so-"

"_Listen to me_," he snarls, digging his nails into my flesh and shoving his face up close to mine. He looks feral. An animal. "If you die, _I _die. You understand me? If you kill you, Vaas will kill _me_."

"Well, I'm pretty sure this will be reusable. I mean, you might have to clear off the blood first, but I'm sure it'll work just find the second time round."

"You don't get it," he says, his voice strained. "He won't _just _kill me. He'll put me back in that cabin. He'll put me _back - in - there_."

"I get it, I really do, but, and I hate to repeat myself here, but _fuck you_, I am _not _going to spend the _rest _of my _fucking life _in a fucking _torture cabin_, so if you'd just _get the fuck off me_…"

"Listen, listen, listen," Jefferson says, words tumbling out of his mouth in his desperation. "I can help you, okay, I can help you and your friends get out of here, you just _can't _kill yourself, okay? Please, please, you… you can't."

"See, I'd believe you if you hadn't just told me that getting out of here was impossible."

Jefferson breaks out into a smile, a smile that terrifies me to my core. _Is everyone in this place absolutely batshit insane_? "I can do it. I can do it, I can do it, I swear, you just have to give me some time."

_He's lying_. "Time? Really? I just have to wait around patiently until you get me out?"

Jefferson's smile slips and sweat gleams on his face. Jesus, he really is terrified. "John, please. Think about your friends, man, think of the others. If you die now, there'll be no helping them. There'll be no-one _to_ help them."

I hesitate. He's right. Nobody else on this fucking island is going to give a shit about them. They'll disappear, sold off to some fucking nutjob or worse, left as toys for Vaas and his men to play with. I think of Tina, little Tina with her wide shiny blue eyes and her great big smile. I think of Marie, left in this place, with all these men leering over her, practically drooling, and my blood boils. _He's right. He's fucking right_.

Jefferson sees my resolve disappear and the relief on his face is a heady thing. He looks like somebody just injected him with a shit-ton of morphine. He opens his mouth to say something else.

The door thumps loudly, making both me and the doc jump a mile. The colour leeches from his face again and he jumps up from his seat, staggering back a step away from the door. He looks from the door to me, a frantic expression on his face.

The door thumps again, louder, crunching underneath the weight of a boot.

_Vaas. It's Vaas._

Jefferson leans forwards, putting both of his hands on my shoulders and gripping tightly. His eyes are pleading, and he speaks quickly.

"John, remember something. When you're there… for the love of God, do what he wants. Whatever he asks you to do, no matter what it is, you do it, you hear me? You do it."

The door smashes open, illuminating the room with light. It blinds me momentarily, a searing pain flooding into my eyes; I press the base of my wrist into my eyes, trying to push the pain away. I can hear Jefferson shouting something, though I'm not sure if he's screaming at me or at whoever just barged in.

Somebody grabs my wrists then, yanking them away from my eyes harshly. I look up, blinking blearily at the dark column looming over me. I can't make out any facial features, just a faceless black swirl. I can't even see their eyes.

Whoever it is tugs on my arm and I'm dragged into a standing position, my arms twisting uncomfortably behind my back. My vision clears a little, enough for me to make out the guy currently binding my wrists together with thick, rough material. He's fairly light skinned, a chunky pair of sunglasses covering the top half of his face while the bottom half is obscured completely by a black bandana. His hair is dark brown, short and cropped like an army buzz cut.

_He's one of Vaas' men_.

Fear kicks in then, and I slam an elbow into the guy's stomach, knocking the wind out of him; he stoops over a little, his breath coming out in a dry wheeze and I shove my elbow into his face, connecting firmly with his nose. There's a sickening crunching sound, a flare of pain in my arm and something warm and wet dribbling down my lower arm.

_Fuck yeah, I broke his nose_.

I have approximately one second to feel smug about this before somebody loops an arm around my neck, pulling me tightly against them, choking me. I try the elbow again, slamming it into their ribcage, but it's not as effective now, earning me only a pained grunt from the guy behind me. I lift my leg up and kick out at his knee, staggering him; he releases some pressure on my neck and I seize my chance, knocking his arms away and spinning on my heel, punching him square in the face. He tumbles to the floor, crashing over the doc's chair.

_Fuck yeah, he's unconscious_.

I turn around, adrenaline whirring, a savage grin on my face. _Bring it, fuckers_!

I turn to meet three pairs of sunglasses, accompanied by three very sharp machetes. Jefferson is kneeling on the floor by their feet, a knife pressed dangerously close to his Adam's apple.

_Well, shit_.


	7. Chapter 7

_Sorry for lack of updating! Uni is such a distraction. And when I say uni, I mean snow and alcohol. :D _

_Hope everybody is enjoying my work so far! Thanks for the reviews, bytheby, I like hearing back from people about it. I hope you're liking John too, enough to care about what happens to the poor guy. :D_

_Thank you for reading, and stay beautiful. :)_

I hold my hands out towards them, my fingers stretched as far as open as they can go. "Now hold up a moment-"

The man closest to me, a darkly tanned man with a thick bush of curly black hair, lurches forwards towards me, machete brandished high up in one hand. Just the sight of it, stretching to a length almost the size of my forearm and coated in flakes of coppery blood, freezes me up completely. The only time I've ever seen a knife before, like an actual proper fuck-off knife, was when Shane got stabbed, but there's no comparison here, not even slightly – that was a tiny little thing, the type that you could easily slip down your sleeve and let it lie in wait until you take particular issue with the drunk guy attempting to chat up your girlfriend.

_That wasn't a knife, __**this**__ is a fucking knife!_

The guy's hand wraps around my arm, and it jolts me back into life. I panic, lashing out and punching him right in the face; I knock the sunglasses clean off his face in an explosion of tiny dark gray shards of glass, and he drops to the floor. The machete clatters noisily to the floor next to me, right at my feet. I look down at it and then back up at the remaining soldiers. They do the exact same thing, tilting their heads to examine the guy on the floor, and then they look back up at me. I can't even see their eyes through the sunglasses, but I can guess what they're thinking. _You wouldn't even dare_.

Oh, I fucking would, motherfuckers.

I drop down to grab the machete, my fingers just brushing the torn leather handle before someone barrels into me, charging at me like we're playing football. He connects firmly with my chest, shoving his shoulder straight into my rib cage, and we fall to the floor in a twisted mess. I shove my knee into his stomach, hearing the breath leave him a strained grunt, and I slam my hands against his chest, trying to push him off me. He claws frantically at my face, trying to disorient me, and I lean as far back as I can, gritting my teeth as the tips of his fingernails slice at my chin. I create enough room between us for me to bend my leg and kick him right in his ribs; he tumbles backwards, arms flailing wildly, and I have just enough time to feel smug – _yeah, doesn't feel so good, does it, bitch?!_ – before the other guy, the last one, runs over, and shoves his foot straight into my face. My nose explodes with a burst of pain, like somebody just let off a dozen tiny fireworks on my face, and something warm and runny starts dribbling down onto my lips.

_Oh, motherfucker, I think he broke my nose_.

I swing out blindly, but the soldier bats my hands away carelessly, like swatting at a fly, reaching down and looping a strong arm around my neck, hoisting me up as if he was lifting nothing but a particularly heavy sack of potatoes. I try to hit his face, lashing out as fast and as hard as I can; he tightens his grip on my neck, and my vision flickers, like a light bulb going out. The guy behind me screams out, shouting something I can't understand, knocking away my flailing hands with just one of his. I try kicking out at his knees, but he dances out of the way, kicking the back of my knee with the heel of his foot. It would've knocked me down had he not got this death grip on my neck, and I nearly scream out loud.

And then I hear a scream, right in my ear, and I wonder if I actually _have _screamed out loud. More blood trickles down onto my lips and I spit it out hurriedly. Nope. Definitely wasn't me screaming. I've got too much blood in my mouth for a fully effective scream like that.

The pressure around my neck sags and then disappears, his arm scraping across my jaw as he collapses to the floor. I drop too, my knee giving out beneath me, but someone grabs me just before I hit the floor, looping my arm around their neck and dragging me up again. I look over, dazed, and Jefferson's eyes look back, the previously tired blue colour now sparkling like electricity. In his hand is a machete. A bloodied machete.

"Jefferson, what did you do?" I wheeze out, looking down at the soldier behind me; he twitches erratically, his eyelids fluttering madly as he convulses, and there's a dark pool of blood spreading quickly out from his chest. I can feel it touching my bare feet, like a very slow moving tide. _I'm basically paddling in his blood_. This thought makes me retch, and I have to spit more blood out of my mouth, praying that I can keep a lockdown on the vomit swirling around in my stomach. _Don't look at him, don't look at him, just don't look_.

"We've just gotta get you out of here," Jefferson says fervently, moving me as quickly as I can hobble away from the dead man. My feet feel sticky, and I know if I looked behind me, I could see bloody footprints trailing eagerly after me. My stomach twists dangerously and I feel dizzy. "We've just gotta get-"

He stops dead as the sound of dozens of angry shouts echo around the small hut, seemingly coming from every direction. I can hear footsteps pounding against the earth, like somebody's performing a tribal dance or something.

"They're coming," I say, in an oddly casual way, as if I was just making a comment on the weather. "From the sounds of it, I'd guess it's pretty much everybody."

"I got that," Jefferson growls under his breath. His eyes move frantically, like he's thinking at warp speed.

"Do you think they'll like what we've done with the place?"

Jefferson snarls desperately. "John, just shut _the fuck _up and let me think, okay?!"

"About what?!" I snap back. "Think about _what_, exactly?! They're gunna walk in here, see all this fucking mess," I look behind me, at the dead man, and I realise I probably shouldn't have looked at him again; nausea lurches in my stomach and I quickly look away, taking deep breaths to force the vomit down._ I've never seen a dead body before_. My vision swims sickeningly, blurring out so strongly it gives me a headache. After a moment, when I'm sure I won't vomit as soon as I open my mouth, I speak again. "And they're going to kill us."

Jefferson doesn't respond, still growing under his breath as he thinks, like an attack dog. He's sweating buckets, sweat trickling down his temples and gleaming in the low light, and his eyes are those of a man who has realised the plane he's in is going to crash any second now and he's desperately trying to think of some impossible plan to save himself. The blood from the machete in his hand drops down onto the floor in a rhythmic tune, and it's weird how that's the clearest thing I can hear right now, over everything else going on outside – it should sound like a war zone to me, but it's all faded background noise. Just the weird splash of blood against more blood.

_When they see all this in here, they won't kill you. They'll send you to Vaas and he will torture you for the rest of eternity. _

They won't kill me, but they'll sure as hell kill Jefferson. Especially considering all I did was knock those two guards out. He _killed _one of them. He's a killer.

_You can save him_.

And just like that, I feel a wave of calm wash over me. I turn to Jefferson.

A small voice in the back of my mind starts freaking out. _Are you fucking __**crazy**__?! Think of what Vaas will do to you, just stop and fucking __**think**__, for one second! You tell them that it was Jefferson, and he'll be free, and you won't get tortured, they won't take it out on you, it'll be fine, it'll be better this way._

I grit my teeth. He won't be free, he'll be _dead_. And they'll still sure as shit torture me. I try to imagine the guy who has to tell Vaas that he can't torture me and it makes my stomach roll with nausea again.

This is what I have to do.

"Jefferson," I say numbly. He doesn't respond. "_Jefferson_," I growl, gripping the collar of his shirt with my fist. Then he looks, his eyes clouding over with a thin film of tears. "Give me the machete," I say slowly.

At first, he doesn't understand, doesn't comprehend what I'm asking him to do. He just stares dumbly back, like he hasn't even heard me. I sigh and then lean over, trying to prise the knife out of his cold, unrelenting fingers. Only then does he react, staggering back a step and looking at me like I'm a ghost.

"No," he says, shaking his head slowly. And then he gets angry. "No, no, no, no, no, no, _no_!"

"Jefferson," I say calmly again, still trying to prise the machete from his hand. "They'll kill you."

"They'll kill _you_!"

"No, they won't. They'll take me to Vaas. _You_, they'll kill."

Jefferson turns towards me now. He looks horrified. "John, if they take you to Vaas…" he trails off. We both know how that's going to end.

"Best case scenario: he kills me. And if he doesn't, that gives _you _time to find my friends and then get me the fuck out of here."

Somebody shouts then, from right outside the door, making Jefferson jump. I seize my opportunity - I shove my elbow into his stomach, knocking the wind right out of him and snatching the machete out of his hand. He slumps to the floor, clutching his stomach, and I kick him right in the face; his head snaps back with a sickening crunch and he topples over, unconscious. He lies in a pool of the dead man's blood and I sincerely hope he forgives me for that later.

The door bursts open, light streaming in, and Dwight Volker strolls calmly through. He takes in the scene, me standing in a room now carpeted by a thick layer of blood with five unconscious men and one dead man, his eyes resting on the dead man in the corner for a longer amount of time than the others. His eyes narrow and his jaw clenches. He turns his unnerving blue eyes on me, on the machete clutched tightly in my hand, at the blood falling from the tip.

We stare each other down. I give him the widest smile I possibly can, waving the machete in the air. I have never been so terrified in my entire life.

Volker lets out a short breath through his nose. He looks back up at me, and steps closer. "I had real high hopes for you, Johnny. Real high fucking hopes. You just cost me a shit load of money, my friend. I got offers for you that I'm going to have to turn down now. I'm gunna have to call your mama and tell her that her boy isn't coming home. Did you think about that, John? Did you think about your mother before you did this?" I don't respond. I can't think about my mother right now. I won't. "Now, when this sort of situation arises, I'd put a bullet through your skull and feed you to my dogs. But, as it turns out, you're still of interest to some of the more… _adventurous _buyers out there. The ones who like a pet with a bit of... _spirit_," he says with a smirk. My hand tightens around the machete in my hand and I fantasise about shoving the blade straight through Volker's fucking eye.

_So do it_.

I lift my arm up ever so slightly, just an inch or two, but Volker's already guessed where I'm going; he chops at my arm with his hand quicker than I can block him off, and it feels like he's just cleaved my arm in two. I drop the machete, clutching at my arm as he speaks, carrying on as if I hadn't moved. "So here's what's going to happen. We're going to set you up with your own special cage, in a luxury location on our compound, and you are going to sit in there quietly until your new mommy or daddy comes to pick you up. Are we clear?"

"But I thought I was going to stay with Uncle Vaas for a few days," I say breathlessly, prodding my arm delicately. It really fucking hurts. What is this guy, the fucking Terminator?!

Volker's expression darkens. "I don't like selling my products damaged."

"Or dead."

"Precisely. So," he says, reaching down to pick up my machete. He jabs it in my direction, casually threatening. "Shall we?"

I walk forwards slowly, squinting as the sunlight blinds me. When the light fades, I widen my eyes cautiously, slowly.

A very familiar face stares back, smiling.

"Vaas…" Volker says warningly, stepping out in front of me to face the other man. Vaas doesn't even register Volker's approach, his eyes on my face the entire time. He runs his eyes over the blood soaking through my skin, and he smiles even wider. "Vaas, step back." Volker's voice is like steel.

Vaas grins, showing off his teeth like a hungry predator. "You first."

It's then that I notice dozens of men surrounding Vaas, all of them dressed like he is, all of them carrying serious fuck-off weaponry. Specifically, guns. Fucking _huge _fucking guns.

Volker narrows his eyes. I can see him start to sweat. "What the fuck do you think you're playing at?"

"It's a new game I just came up with myself. It's called 'get out of the fucking way or I blow your fucking head off'."

"You seriously think you can talk that way to me?!"

"_I am the law here_!" Vaas screams, getting right up in Volker's face, his jokey tone vanishing instantly. "_Me. _I rule this fucking kingdom. You get in my way, you come up against me again, and I will eat you alive. You understand me, amigo?"

Volker's face has bleached white, almost to the colour of bone. "_I… _am in charge here…" he says weakly.

"No, no, no, no," Vaas says, putting his hands on both sides of Volker's face. "You work… for _me_. No more bullshit, no more 'Vaas, do this' or 'Vaas, do that' or 'Vaas, don't kill the _fucking _hostages!'" he shouts. "These are _my _islands now. I do with them… and with _you_… what I fucking want. You understand me?"

Volker's bottom lip trembles, and, in that moment, he looks like a scared child getting a scolding from his father. I almost feel sorry for the guy.

He nods slowly, looking away from Vaas' eyes.

Vaas beams and slaps Volker's cheeks.

"Now that is what I fucking like to hear!" He pushes Volker away and the man staggers back, like Vaas punched him.

Vaas turns to me then, smiling proudly. And here I'd been thinking he'd forgotten me.

"So. Jason," he steps towards me, glancing through the open doorway to the doc's room. He sees the blood and he chuckles to himself. "You make all that mess in there, Jason?"

"He's the one bleeding all over the floor, not me."

Vaas laughs and turns to Volker again. "And you tried to sell this fuck without my permission?" Volker doesn't respond. He almost looks catatonic.

"So. Back where we left off, I guess?" I ask, trying to quash down on the raging panic blaring in my head like a siren.

Vaas shakes his head. "Nonononononono, man." He pauses to smirk at me, the smile of a demon. "I got a different game in mind this time."


	8. Chapter 8

_Hello again! Just a quick word to say thank you for the lovely reviews and that I hope you're still with me! I apologise again for the lack of updating, and I'll give you this longer, more Vaas-filled chapter as way of saying sorry. :)_

_Enjoy!_

"First things first." Vaas says, turning away from me and walking towards the closest of his guards. I sneak a quick glance at Volker; he looks like he's been frozen solid, his entire body as rigid as a statue save for the frantic shaking of his chest, sucking in breaths like a dying man. And here I thought Volker was badass enough to stand up to Vaas, to be enough of a shield between him and me that I had a little bit more time before Vaas knocked my fucking door down and dragged me out by my neck. I was _counting _on him to be able to keep Vaas on his leash. In a weird way, I almost feel disappointed.

_In case you hadn't noticed_, a snide voice in the back of my mind drawls, _Vaas is just an eensy bit obsessed with Jason fucking Brody. You think he's just gunna sit back and let you disappear, with nothing more than a smile and a wave_?

I really hate myself sometimes.

Vaas turns back around, his movements making an odd clinking metal sound. There's something in his hands now, something thick and heavy and gray; it looks and sounds like chains, like the proper old fashioned ones they used to use to stick people to the walls in medieval times, but the metal is thicker, at least as wide as my neck. I stare at it, uncomprehendingly, figuring that either way, it's not exactly going to something to make me feel more comfortable. I drag my gaze back up to meet Vaas' and, as soon as I do so, he grins at me, like he's been waiting for the moment when I met his eyes again. Just looking at him, into those endless black pits, makes me feel queasy. I've seen a similar look in people's eyes before, when I've gotten into fights with Shane over some chicks in a bar. The type of smile that says 'I am going to hurt you and I am going to fucking enjoy it'. Only, Vaas' smile promises one hundred times worse.

"We're gunna go pay a quick visit to some new friends of yours, some very good friends of mine, and then me and you are gunna spend some time… getting to know each other again. I feel, last time, I didn't get to see that much of you at all, you just…" he whistles then and slowly extends his arm upwards, fluttering his fingers like the wings of a butterfly. He watches his hand for a moment, his black eyes shining in the sunlight, before he turns his attention back to me. I can't see any white in his eyes at all then, not even a single speck. "You just fucking left. Up and left and went crying aaaaalll the way… to _Citra_." His voice darkens dangerously on the last word, hissing the word out through gritted teeth. I don't have to know who Citra is to know that she is not somebody I should be mentioning to Vaas if I want to keep all my extremities.

He refocuses on my face and smirks bitterly. "At least you know how it feels now, huh? To be fucking _abandoned _by her? _Betrayed _by her?" He leans in close then, until our faces are mere inches apart. I feel like I can't breathe, like his anger and his _evil _are poisoning the air around me. "Sacrificing _everything _for her only to be kicked to the fucking ground?" His voice is hoarse. I stare at him, shocked. It almost sounds like he has fucking _emotions_. Like he's fucking _upset_. He suddenly grins then, leaping out of his brooding mood. "I fucking told you, Jason. I fucking told you about her. You gotta stop thinking with your dick, man. Otherwise, my sister… she's gunna eat you up…" He pauses for a second, giving me a moment to think, _holy fucking shitballs, there are __**two **__of them?!_ "And spit you out." He stops again to chuckle softly. "I'm guessing she already did, no?"

It takes me a moment to realise he's asking a question. I panic, staring at the smirk n his face with fast-growing horror. _He's expecting an answer, what do I say?! So far the 'I'm not Jason' defence hasn't fucking worked, but how the __**fuck **__am I supposed to answer like Jason Brody?! For the love of God, don't say anything even remotely smartass. _

"You more than me, right?" I hear myself say and I could happily stab myself in the face with a machete. The voice in the back of my head growls, frustrated. _It's almost like you __**want **__to be tortured._

"Oh, Jason, Jason, Jason." Vaas leans in even closer, so that our foreheads are only about a breath's width away from touching. He's all I can see. I can feel the metal chains in his hands against my skin, and they are icy cold. "You have no fucking idea," he whispers before leaning back again, jumping hurriedly away from me. "You got two options now, Jason. Option one; I let you walk around freely. No cuffs, no chains, no nothing. You follow me and you don't try to run, and we all get along like one big happy fucking family. Option _two_." He holds up the chains, the chunky chipped silver coiled in his hands like a snake. "I chain you up like a fucking dog, and I drag you around after me like a fucking dog until you're house-broken. Now," he says quietly, his voice barely above a murmur. "Are we fucking clear here?"

I swallow hard, sneaking one last look at Volker. He hasn't even moved, not even slightly, like he's been petrified by Medusa, and then Jefferson's voice streaks through my mind from out of nowhere. _Whatever he asks you to do, no matter what it is, you do it, you hear me? You do it._

Obedience or pain?

I grit my teeth and bow my head, looking down at his rows of necklaces looped around his scarred neck. "Op… option one," I force out, hating myself more fiercely than I've ever hated anything before. This is pathetic. Fucking_ pathetic_. It's a powerful hatred, one that makes me feel barely human.

Vaas touches the bottom of my jaw softly, forcing my head back up to meet his eyes. "Say that again."

The urge to scream _fuck you_ rears up in me, like white hot vomit, but I force it back down, kicking it down into my stomach where it waits, bubbling like acid. I meet his eyes and I feel so angry that I wouldn't be surprised if sparks flew from my eyeballs. "Option _fucking _one," I spit venomously at him. He doesn't even blink in response. Hell, he looks fucking _pleased_.

"That's good, Jason, that's good, get really fucking angry. I can see all that rage… building up inside…" he places a hand on my chest and pushes once. "It feels good, doesn't it? Doesn't it just feel fucking _beautiful_? I always respected that about you, Jason, that fucking _passion _you had inside you. How did it feel, Jason… to get revenge? To drive… that fucking knife… right here!" He shouts, punching himself in the chest with a closed palm. "Did that make you feel good, Jason, did it make you happy, did that finally make Grant go away? How did it feel, Jason, _tell me_!" he screams frantically. I don't respond, my brain whirring too quickly for me to think of an adequate response. _Whoever Grant was, he was special to Jason. And Vaas killed him. Jason was out for revenge_.

Can't say I blame him.

Vaas sighs, apparently calm again. "I wish I had your guts man, I wish I'd had your balls. You see, before… before you showed up, I was a pussy. Hoyt Volker's little _bitch_. I'm serious, man, I'm completely fucking serious. Like I couldn't even take a piss without the big boss man there to wipe my fucking dick for me. Do you know how many times..." he says, leaning in close again, conspiratorially. "I wanted to drive my fucking knife… right into Volker's heart? Right – into – his – fucking- heart?!" He slams against his own chest again before promptly bursting into hysterical giggles. "Y'know… y'know, Jason… I fucking hated you for doing that. For taking that away from me. That was _mine_," he hisses viciously. And then, just like that, his expression clears, a perfectly blank slate now. "But everything's different now, Jason. I can see now, I can fucking _see_. You inspired me, you showed me. See, pricks like Volker and his fucking pussy brother over here?" Dwight Volker doesn't even flinch. "They're savages. Pretty boy bloodsuckers. They want money, they want power, they want some chick to suck their dick and tell them how fucking powerful they are. They don't see… what I see now. What you showed me. How many times did I kill you, Jason? Huh? Three? Four? And yet here you are. What good did all of Volker's fucking money do him when you drove that knife… straight through him?" He snorts through his nose. "Money doesn't earn you _shit _around here anymore. There's only one currency left around here now, my friend, and I'm going to cut it out of you nice… and slow…" He pauses to grin at me, showing all of his teeth like a shark. "Until there ain't nothing left."

_Oh lord Jesus_.

"Now," Vaas says, stepping backwards and clapping his hands together, keeping them tightly pressed, palm-to-palm, like he's in prayer. "Let's go meet your new friends. Hmmmnnn?" I don't move. I'm too scared to even think straight, a thousand thoughts weaving through my head in a scream of white noise all at once. _Why didn't you kill yourself when you had the chance?!_ "Jason," Vaas snaps, his voice sharper now. It takes me a moment to realise he's talking to me, that _I _am Jason now. _The moment you forget that, you die_. I refocus on his face and he gestures, exasperatedly. "Hurry the fuck up, man."

I start staggering forwards, my legs moving awkwardly, robotically. The ground beneath me feels sticky, like I'm wading through syrup, and I realise that this is because I still have blood coating the soles of my feet, soaked into my skin like tattoo ink. The urge to stop and start frantically wiping my feet against the earth beneath me is almost overpowering, but Vaas won't be kept waiting patiently for much longer. He'll stick that thing on my neck and the idea of that is more humiliating, more painful, than anything else I can currently possibly comprehend. I continue forwards, gritting my teeth against the stickiness, following Vaas as slowly as possible without being close to him. He talks as we walk, giving instructions to his soldiers or just mindlessly chatting to me; once or twice I hear him say 'Jason', and it makes me feel empty when I realise that I react to it now, like he was calling me by my proper name. I need to be Jason to stay alive, but I can't let me forget myself.

_I am not Jason Brody, I am John McCarthy, John McCarthy, my name is John McCarthy_.

I look around as we walk, taking in the minimal sights. The compound is dotted with more of the same small huts like Jefferson's, though these look considerably more disgusting than the doc's; the air is filled with the sounds of pain, of sobbing, of wailing, of angry shouts and quick short screams, and I notice more cages, dozens of them, crammed full of people. I can't see anybody I recognise, not even JD anymore, and I look away from their faces as soon as I realise they're not familiar to me. I wonder what they did with him. What they did with all of them.

Marie's face fills my mind. _If they've hurt her, I will burn them all alive_.

The compound is also heavily guarded – I don't think I can take a step without running into a new guard, and there's one right behind me, a gun held right against my back just in case I get any ideas about running. I wonder if he'd shoot me if I tried to run. I wonder what would happen if I turned around to grab his gun and shoot myself?

_Think of the others. Let Jefferson find the others first, then we can go from there_.

Vaas stops outside one of the larger cabins, one big enough to look like a barrack for soldiers. He pauses outside the door for a moment, stroking the silky looking wood with the tips of his fingers. I wait behind him, dread growing by the second. _Let's go meet your new friends_. This is where he keeps his favorites? I sincerely hope that by 'friends', he doesn't mean torture devices. Though that wouldn't entirely be a surprise to me either.

He pushes open the door with a bang, striding confidently into the room without a second glance back at me. I hear muffled whimpering, from several people from the sounds of it, and I look behind me, praying that somehow the guard at my back has decided to go about his business, leaving me a readily available escape route?

Unfortunately not. He's still there. More specifically, his fucking gun is still there. He gives me a quick nudge with his elbow, trying to shove me forwards, and I briefly considering trying to fight him. My hand tightens into a fist at my side.

_Gun versus fists? Really? You're such a dumbass_.

I hear a high pitched whistle emanating from inside the cabin, surely coming from Vaas, and the guard raises his gun, the small black barrel pointing directly at my face. _Can you move faster than a fucking bullet, sports star?_

I growl under my breath and reluctantly pad into the cabin, into a very dimly lit large room, the one sole room in the cabin. On one side of the room is a chair, several sets of heavy looking chains like the one Vaas threatened to put around my neck earlier, and a small, currently empty table.

The other side is closed off by bamboo bars, the same sturdy material used to make the cages, and there's a lock tied around two bamboo columns, sealing the cage in. Inside the cage are five people, five very gaunt and very sickly looking people; they're not tied up, they're completely unrestrained, but their hands all dangle limply into their laps like they've got handcuffs on. Not one of them raises their heads to look up at me or Vaas, though he's trying his best to provoke a reaction out of them. None of them are my friends. Hopefully that means Vaas just hasn't gotten around to torturing them yet.

"You guys don't look happy to see me." I jump a little as Vaas speaks, his voice as loud as a gunshot. "This is the welcome back I get? Huh? I haven't seen you in _days_ now, and you don't even seem pleased to see me. Have you not missed me? Were you hoping I'd never come back? Hmmmnnn?" Vaas turns to me. "Do you think they've missed me, Jason? It's your fault I've been gone." He looks back at them, bending slowly into a crouch to be more on their level. "It's his fault I've been gone so long. Fucking prick," he scoffs venomously. "But it's okay. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, I'm here now. Shushshushshushshushshush," he says softly as one of the women, a small looking woman with filthy blonde hair matted to the side of her head, starts to cry. "It's okay. I brought you a present. A gift." He grins over his shoulder at me. "This is an old friend of mine. A very old fucking friend of mine. You remember him?" he says suddenly to one of the men, a dark skinned and well-built man sitting on the end. The man looks up, and his eyes are those of a dead fish. "You remember Jason, don't you, brother?"

The man looks at me, his dead eyes showing nothing, not even a glimpse of life.

_Of course he isn't gunna fucking recognise you, __**you aren't Jason Brody**_.

"Aren't you fucking going to say hello?!" Vaas snarls at me, his fingernails digging into the fabric on his knees.

I look over at the man in the cage. I swallow hard.

I go to say hello, like a good obedient little man, but that's not what comes out.

"_Fuck you_ _for what you've done to them_."

_That _gets the caged man's attention. That gets all of their attention; they all look up, their heads snapping up almost in unison, and they stare at me aghast, shocked. Every single one of their face screams _what have you done_.

"Fuck me?" Vaas repeats calmly, standing up slowly. I can hear the storm brewing in his voice, can see it behind his black eyes. "Fuck _me_?! _Fuck you, you fucking prick_." He slams me right up against the wall behind me and presses his forearm to y neck. _Jesus he's strong_. "You did this to me, Jason," he whispers. "_You _fucking did this. You… and that fucking bitch you love so much."

Stupidly, my mind assumes he means Marie, and him calling her a bitch makes me see red. "_I _didn't do _anything_, because _I _am not _fucking Jason Brody_!" I snarl back. "_I – am not – Jason – fucking – __**Brody**_. And you can torture me however much you want to, but I will _never be Jason_. Ever."

Vaas observes me for a second, his black eyes running over my features.

And then he smiles, releasing me from his grip and clapping me hard on the shoulder. "This guy is gunna be fun," he informs the other caged people, gleefully.

He hits me then, whirling round in a dizzyingly quick motion to punch me straight in the stomach; all the air leaves me in one sickening gasp and I slouch over, clutching my stomach tightly. I feel like I'm about to throw up.

Vaas takes something out of his belt then, something small and white and sharp.

_Is that a fucking needle_?

"Let's see how much fun you can have with this, Jason."

He stabs the needle into my arm before I have a chance to block him and presses hard down on the plunger.

My entire body erupts in agony.


	9. Chapter 9

The worst pain I've ever had to deal with was when I was a kid, after my dad left. I got into a lot of fights, mostly with kids I knew couldn't or wouldn't fight back – they all knew me, knew me as the kid whose dad had just upped and fucked off, and they pitied me, so bad that they'd just shove me away and walk off if I ever tried to fight them. Of course that just made me angrier, made me feel more singled out. _If Dad was still here, they'd be treating me exactly the same as always, no special treatment bullshit_. So I started pushing harder, and pushing at kids I didn't know very well, the kids who'd be more likely to fight back. And one day, one kid did fight back. So hard, in fact, that he broke my wrist. I remember staggering back a step and looking down at my wrist to see a small lump poking up from under my skin. I remember screaming so loud my ears hurt. And I remember the kid who'd done it, who snapped my wrist like a twig, stayed with me the entire time; rushing to tell a teacher, being driven to the emergency room, even while I was having it bandaged up. Even though he knew he'd get in trouble, he stayed. I managed to repay him for that ten years later, though he was much worse than I'd been; all I could think of in that ambulance, as blood gushed out of his stab wound like a water fountain, was that lump in my wrist. He didn't leave me and I didn't leave him. I won't leave him now.

That was the worst. Maybe it was because I was a kid and everything seems so much extreme when you're little, but it felt like Shane had just threw a sledgehammer down onto my wrist and crushed it into tiny grains of bone. _That_ is the worst pain I've ever felt in my entire life, but this one small injection… the injection surpasses that in every way possible. Pain is everything, in everything, in the air in my lungs, in the blood in my veins, in my very soul, pain like fire, like acid. Time stops, ceases to exist all together. I don't know if it's ten seconds, ten minutes or ten hours, but eventually, the pain subsides, and I slowly come back to myself, back into my own body.

I can hear quiet chuckling from above me somewhere, and it takes me a moment to realise I'm lying on the floor, face down. My hands are curled into fists on either side of my head and my nails are coated with blood. I unfurl them and my bones groan as I stretch my fingers out.

"That's some good shit, amigo."

My blood boils with rage like I've never felt before at the very sound of his voice. _**Vaas**_. "I've never tried anything like it. There's nothing quite like it, no? Experiencing pain… on a level that most people can't even _dream _about." His voice softens, and he speaks dreamily, wondrously. "Like you just poured bleach onto your brain… like the very flames… of Hell itself… are flowing… through your blood…" The floorboard next to my head creaks and everything gets a little darker. I can hear him breathing quietly, calmly, right by my head. "You're a strong man, Jason. When I gave everybody else a taste, they couldn't handle it. They just…" he whistles lowly. "They just fucking dropped, they couldn't fucking handle it. They shut it out of their heads and only came back when all the pain had gone. But you, man… you fucking lived it, you fucking _accepted_ it. Because you and me," he shuffles closer to me, ducking his head closer to mine. "Men like you and me know… that that, _right there_… is the closest of any of us will ever get to feeling really fucking _alive_."

**Kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him**.

With a roar, I lash out at him, getting him right in the face; stunned, he staggers back, crashing against the bamboo bars behind him, and I leap at him again, pushing myself off the floor and barrelling into him, trying to get my hands around his throat. I can barely see through the red mist that has descended over my eyes and I can only hear faint, muffled sounds. The sound of screaming, of somebody shouting, of my own inhuman sounding growls, all background noise to the demonic chanting in my head, a voice I don't even recognise as my own. **Kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM**.

Something smashes into the side of my head then, something hard enough to send me flying off Vaas, but not hard enough to put me down. I look up and charge before the guard has a chance to shoot me down; I connect with his stomach and we both go down, me on top of him and already slamming my fists into his face, breaking the sunglasses, breaking his skin, crunching the bones underneath my hands. The red veil thickens and the voice intensifies, screaming its bloodlust inside my head so loud it hurts.

I don't stop until Vaas loops something around my neck, something thick and cold and metallic. _That neck chain_. Too late, I try to swipe him off, to knock him back, but he's still stronger than I am, _will always be stronger than I am_, and he drags me backwards, using the chain to pull me away from the guard and towards the table, where he quickly secures the other end of the chain. I yank as hard as possible, hoping that it's not bolted to the floor, but of course it is. I let out a yowl that sounds more like that of a wild cat than a human, but even I recognise the futility of trying to pull at the chain. I'm not stronger than metal bolts.

Vaas steps in front of me then, his eyes dark, his expression unreadable. I glower back, barely restraining myself from snapping at him. There's a small voice in the back of my mind, small but getting clearer, begging with me. _You're not an animal, don't let him do this_.

"Do you see now, Jason?" he says quietly. His eyes don't leave mine for a second. "Do you see what I am now?"

All fight in me dies when he says that. _Do you see what I am? Do __**you **__see what you are? You're __**him**_.

Oh, god, what have I done.

I look over at the guard, the deathly still guard, and it hits me, what I have done to him. His blood on my hands, on my clothes, on my skin. On my soul. I'm stained.

I killed him.

Vaas leans in closer, but I can't attack him now. I can't even move.

"This is what my sister does to people," he says in a low murmur. The people in the cage wouldn't be able to hear him clearly. "She takes everything and leaves you… with _that_…" he pauses and then smiles, dazzlingly. "It's fucking beautiful, isn't it? All that anger, all that rage…" he stops and inhales deeply, like he's breathing it all in for himself. "It's like when you put a tiger in a cage. This beautiful creature all chained up and just waiting for the fucking moment when you slip up, so it can sink its teeth right into your fucking throat, that's you, Jason. That's fucking _you_. And I'm the one… who's going to tame you. You know… somebody once told me that the real fun in a hunt isn't the hunt itself, and it certainly ain't when you've killed the fucking thing. Nononono… it's when you're breaking it in. Reaching out and crushing all the life that it's got left." He sniffs loudly and stands up straighter, wiping his hands together. He walks over to the dead guard, _**the dead fucking guard**_, and glances down nonchalantly, like the man's nothing more than a stray newspaper floating into Vaas' path. He shoots me a grin. "It's a real fucking shame I gotta crush all that, Jason. A real fucking shame, but trust me, man. We're gunna have a lot of fun doing it," he nudges the dead man with his foot, grinning even wider as the corpse doesn't even slightly react. "You're a messy boy, Jason. Jesus fucking Christ, look at his fucking face, man. Fuck." He smirks down at me. "You thinkin' of me when you did this, Jason?"

"_**Fuck you**_."

"Hey, I get it, man, I get it. I couldn't get your face out of my fucking head for months, man. Everywhere I looked, _**BAM**_," he shouts suddenly, slamming his fist against the bamboo bars. One of the women inside gives a small shriek, but he pays her no attention. "There's your _fucking _pretty boy face, giving me a great big _fucking _smirk." He stops screaming and giggles. "I had a, erm… a few _mix ups_, with this kind of shit. Killed the wrong fucking people. You know…" he sighs disappointedly. "If you'd had the good fucking grace to die the first time I killed you, a lot of people would still be alive right now."

"_**Fuck. You**_."

"Jason. Seriously, man, it's fucking boring now. I feel like it's all you ever say to me. _Fuck you, Vaas, _or_ go fuck yourself, Vaas_. Like a fucking broken record. Are you shy, do you feel shy, Jason, in front of all your new friends? It's okay. It's okay, they're cool, they're cool." He turns to them. "You're fucking scaring him, guys, it's not fucking cool." To me now. "See? They fucking hate me now because of you, taking all my fucking time. It's selfish, Jason, you gotta learn to _share_. Everybody else learnt to share. Didn't you guys?" One of the women starts crying quietly. "These fucking guys," Vaas chuckles fondly. His expression darkens, a sadistic smirk on his face. "Can't give one of them something without all of them wanting it to. Isn't that right-"

He's interrupted then by the door slamming open, a guard tumbling through the open door. He starts to say something and then catches sight of the dead body. His words catch in his throat and he stutters to a halt.

"What is it?" Vaas asks in a mildly annoyed voice, like a boss that's been disturbed doing important paperwork. The guard starts talking again, stammering his words at first, keeping his eyes on the body. I don't understand the language he's speaking, but evidently Vaas does; he replies in the same quick-paced tongue and stands up. The guard by the door looks over at me, looks at my bloodied hands and his colleague's messed-up face, and his fingers twitch towards his knife.

_Good. Kill me, kill me please_.

"All right, Jason," Vaas says loudly, over a sudden loud clinking sound. He's removing the chains from around the table. I sit perfectly still. "We got a job to do."

I turn my head to look at him. He's holding the other end of the chain in his hands, waiting patiently. "What do you mean, 'we'?" I ask slowly. Vaas responds with a smirk.

_Well, I do not even slightly like where that is going_.

"And if I refuse?"

Vaas sighs, sadly. "That would be really disappointing, Jason, that really would be," he says, holding onto the chains with one hand while reaching towards his belt with the other. He pats the pockets on his right hip, and I can see the exposed tops of white needles sitting comfortably inside. _No fucking prizes for guessing what's in there_.

"Your choice."

I grit my teeth and stand up, the heavy chain around my neck pressing uncomfortably down onto my shoulders. I go to ask him to take it off, but stop myself when I realise how ridiculous that would be. No fucking way he'd ever relieve me of something that was causing me pain.

I look back up at him, jaw clenched, and I realise he was waiting for me to ask him to take it off. His black eyes glint fervently under the low light.

I don't say a word.

We stare at each other for a moment before he grins and starts walking out. The chain tugs at my neck and he whistles, like you'd whistle for a fucking _dog_. "Come on, boy."

I growl. "I'm not your fucking dog, psycho."

"Wrong!" he shouts as we walk. I can hear crying, muffled crying and lots of it. I keep my head held high, even when people look over at me wearing this _fucking dog collar _and the humiliation of it burns so badly my eyes sting. _Don't fucking cry, you pussy_. "You're mine now. My favourite fucking little pet."

"Gee, that's such a fucking honor," I murmur venomously to myself.

"You don't stop fucking barking, little doggie, I'm gunna have to take you out back and fucking shut you myself."

I don't doubt it.

Vaas turns a corner, and the crying reaches a crescendo. I blink rapidly. It takes a few minutes for the scene to really set in.

Vaas drops the end of the chain and, immediately, two guards on either side of me, grabbing my arms and dragging me after Vaas. I'm happy that he's at least stopped leading me around by the fucking balls, but surely they can at least take this fucking thing off now.

He walks up the steps to the stage in front of me and turns around, his arms spread at either sides. He doesn't acknowledge anybody else except for me. His smile is huge. "Welcome, Jason! To tonight's edition of my favorite game. I made it up myself, I think you're really gunna like it, since you never got to play last time. It's a lot of fun, a lot of fun, and it's a really simple fucking concept."

I'm scanning the faces of the people behind him as he talks, people on their knees with their hands bound behind their backs and their mouths gagged with strips of that white fabric. They're all looking at Vaas, their lives flashing before their eyes as this mad man bellows at me, all except for one. One of them is looking right at me like he's seen a ghost.

I look back at him, and my stomach drops out of me completely. _Oh lord jesus no, not him, not here, oh fuck no_.

"It's called 'you choose who lives…'" Vaas descends the steps again and leers right into my face. I helplessly drag my gaze back to him, my heart racing. _Oh my god, what do I do?!_ When our eyes meet, Vaas grins, showing off all his white teeth. "And who dies."


	10. Chapter 10

_Hi there, everyone! I want to start off by saying how sorry I am for the lack of updates; these last couple of months have been busy/dramatic/generally not too pleasant, and I found I just couldn't write anything with all this shit going on. But, on the plus side, everything's getting a lot better, and I really want to carry this on, especially after reading some more lovely reviews! Seriously, ohmygod, I nearly cried reading one of them, it was genuinely one of the nicest things to be able to read about my work. So, thank you for that. :3_

_Anyhoo, you'll have to excuse me if this chapter isn't quite as good/seems out of place in comparison to others. I don't know why, but I really struggled writing this one. I knew what I wanted to happen and where I wanted it to go, but I just couldn't put it down in text form. But, yah, I'll try and update more regularly/when inspiration hits, and, as per usual, any comments or messages or questions or criticisms or whatever you have for me, I appreciate anything and everything. _

_Thank you again! Sorry for the little rant, and enjoy! :)_

"_No_." The word shoots from my mouth almost before Vaas has even finished talking, louder than I meant it to be; everything goes quiet, even the sobbing up on stage, as if everybody just started holding their breath as one. Waiting to see Vaas' reaction. I can't look at him though, physically can't: my eyesight keeps wandering back over to the stage, to the people up there, to _Tommy_. Jesus fucking Christ, that's _Tommy up there_. _Tina's Tommy. _It makes me feel sick to my very core to see him like that, bound and gagged and beat up to shit: his dark brown curls are matted with blood and sweat and dirt, clinging uncomfortably to the torn skin on his forehead and one of his eyes is so swollen it's impossible to see any of his actual eye. He's still got his head held up high, though; the other people up there, they all look physically and emotionally broken, heads slumped against their chests, eyes glazed over, but not Tommy. The eye that I can somewhat see still sparkles with _something_. _He's still fighting_. His gaze gives nothing away, cool and collected like it's no big surprise that I've just been dragged out here, with a big-ass metal chain around my neck, being called Jason by the head psychopath out here. _I didn't give that kid enough credit_.

"What did you just fucking say."

I drag my gaze slowly back to Vaas, trying to keep my face as blank as Tommy is. _Don't let him see that you know Tommy, don't you even dare._ Vaas' face is just as hard to read, but his voice crackles with fire. It's hard to tell if he's angry or if he's amused or both. Most likely both. Or he'll switch moods with the next beat of his heart. _Come on, man, you can do this. If Tommy can be brave, least you can do is give it a go too. _"I said no. I'm not. I _won't_."

Vaas stares down at me for an unknowable amount of time, barely even blinking. His whole body seems to shake, trembling so violently it looks like he's about to explode at any second. I can feel my own body shivering as well, buzzing like there's a live wire in my blood stream; I'm expecting him to lash out at any second and the waiting is killing me. It's not just me it's scaring either; the guards on either side of me loosen their grip on my arms, taking a cautious step back just in case Vaas does take a swing at me, or shoot me, or something. I have the hysterical urge to scream at him to hit me now, just to take away the suspense of it. _Don't look at Tommy, don't look at him or Vaas will see, Vaas will know, don't look at him_.

Vaas moves his arm then, reaching behind him slowly, and the suddenness of the movement makes my whole body jerk in surprise. I grit my teeth and keep my eyes on his, _keep your eyes on his, keep your eyes on his_. It's a physical effort at this point; my heart's beating so loud in my ears I can't hear anything else, save for the dim music of the world around us, and all I can see is him. There are torches burning brightly behind him, and his silhouette is lit up by an ominous orange glow, turning his eyes and the dark skin underneath it an even darker shade. It makes him look more demonic than he already seems.

There's a soft clicking sound, like somebody pulling back on a spring, and Vaas brings a gun into my line of vision. Behind him, somebody makes a muffled noise of protest. _Shut up, Tommy, shut the fuck up_.

Vaas lets the gun rest loosely in his hand, his index finger caressing the trigger gently, lovingly. He still hasn't torn his gaze away from mine. "What did you fucking say," he repeats quietly.

I can't hear my own heartbeat anymore.

"I…" I hate the tremble in my voice as I speak. _Brave, for fuck's sake man, be fucking brave. _"I said no."

Without hesitation and without even so much as a glance behind, Vaas lifts his gun-arm up and pulls the trigger. The noise hits me as hard as a bullet, and I think I let out a shout of pain, but I'm drowned out by all of the other cries coming from the people on the stage, muffled shrieks and sobs.

There's a heavy thudding sound, a sickening squelching sound and more screams. Vaas is blocking my view of the stage, but I can guess just exactly what's happened.

_Tommy?!_

The overwhelming relief when I see Tommy, _alive_, is a horrible thing. _Jesus Christ, somebody __**else**__ just died_, _you heartless bastard. _

"_What did you just say, motherfucker?!_" Vaas screams, lifting his gun up again and aiming it blindly behind him. "_What did you just fucking say?!_"

"I… I can't…" I stutter helplessly, looking at the hostages on the stage. _I can't choose who lives and who dies, I can't, I can't do it_. I can feel tears in the corners of my eyes and I have to fight as hard as I can not to let them out. _If you don't choose_, a panicked little voice in the back of my head pipes up, _he'll kill them all. He'll kill __**Tommy**_.

I hate myself for putting him above all the others, but I do it anyway. _Not Tommy, he can't kill Tommy, I won't let him. I've got to get him back to Tina_.

Another gunshot rings out. Another body falls. _Jesus fucking Christ_.

"Stop, would you just fucking _stop?!_" I roar, thrashing as hard as I can against the guards' grip. "I didn't fucking say anything!"

"Exactly." Vaas grabs my hair with his free hand and yanks me up; instantly, the guards' hands fall away, practically pushing me away in their eagerness to get rid of me, and Vaas wraps his arm around my neck, forcing me to look at the stage. I'm vaguely aware of the remaining hostages, shuffling as far away as they can from the bodies, tears streaming down their grime-covered faces, but all I can see is the two bodies. Syrupy red blood pools around their heads, so vivid and so colourful it doesn't look real, like somebody's recreating a murder scene with red food colouring. _They're dead because of me_.

_**No. **__Dead because of __**him**_.

"Come on, Jason, let's go. Let's go, Jason, come on, _come on, Jason, __**come on**_!" Vaas screams, tightening his grip on my neck and flexing his finger on the trigger.

He turns the gun in Tommy's direction.

_NO._

I brace myself, preparing to shove an elbow into Vaas' stomach.

And then there's a loud groaning sound, like metal folding in on itself. Vaas pauses, relaxing his grip on my neck, though still not enough for me to shove him off. _How is this guy so strong?_

Oh, yeah, _drugs_.

Someone starts shouting, bellowing something in a language I don't know, and then others join in, deep booming voices, all filled with confusion. _What's happening?_ My heart leaps in my chest. _Hope_.

Vaas shouts something then, right into my ear, something in that language the others are all screaming in. His arm slips away from around my neck and I get one moment of relief, one moment of being able to enjoy not being manhandled, before somebody shoves my back, hard, with something pointy and metallic. I glance around, earning myself a smack in the face and another jab in the back. _I take it you want me to move forward then?_ I shuffle forwards obediently, silently taking in the scene as I pad forwards. Whatever's going on, it's chaos; everybody's shouting angrily at each other, picking up whatever weapons are close by and jogging away from me, in the opposite direction. I try to look to see if I can see Tommy, to see if I can make a grab for him and we can run for it, but that earns me another punch to the face, so hard it staggers me. Somebody gives me a helpful tug back up, yanking on my hair so hard I'm sure several short strands are missing, and shoves me forwards again, screaming at me again.

_If you're ever going to do anything, you have to do it now_.

I stop abruptly, shoving my shoulder hard into the person behind me. I connect with his chest and he yelps in pain, losing his grip on his weapon; I slam my elbow into his wrist, knocking the gun loose and sending it flying. One last jab to the face and the guard drops, his eyes fluttering wildly as he goes.

_Got to find Tommy, got to find Tommy_.

I turn back and start forwards-

Only to be dragged back again, someone seizing my shoulder, digging their nails so hard into my bare skin it stings, pulling me back so hard I almost fall over. I immediately send a kick at their midsection, almost before I've hit the floor, but they dodge it swiftly, kicking my foot out of the way and leaning over me, trying to stop me from lashing out at them.

Only then do I realise that they're shouting at me. And that I recognise who it is.

"Jefferson?" I blink sluggishly, keeping my hands raised in front of my face. _Is this really happening?_

He grasps my outstretched hand and pulls me onto my feet. His face is hard, determined. He looks more alive than before, even with a nasty bruise covering a good stretch of his skin. Oops.

"We're getting you the fuck out of here, kiddo."

"Not without Tommy," I blurt out, fighting weakly against him as he tries to pull me away. "We gotta go back for him!" I snap, harsher this time, giving Jefferson a proper shove.

"John, don't make me do this."

"I am _not _leaving here without my friend, Jefferson, you've got to be out of your fucking-"

I don't see the punch coming, and it hurts like motherfucking-hell because of it. I can taste blood in my mouth and one of my teeth feels like it's been cracked open.

_Oh, motherfucker._

"Jesus fucking Christ," Jefferson huffs, wheezing loudly. _He's dragging you out_, I realise with a horrified kick to the gut; I try shoving him off, mumbling incoherently about Tommy, but it's useless. "Johnny, fucking… would you fucking stop it, I'm trying to help you out here, asshole!"

"We need to go back for Tommy," I slur, feeling the blood swill around in my mouth as I talk. "Jefferson, we need-"

"Oh, fuck this."

Jefferson turns to me and sends a foot straight into my face.

I can vaguely hear him insincerely apologising as my vision seeps away into darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

"You should not have come here."

My eyes shoot open and I bolt upwards with a gasp, pulling air into my lungs like a drowning man. I put a hand against my chest and my fingers brush against fabric, a shirt I hadn't been wearing before; dirty, torn, and definitely about two sizes too small for me, but it's something. I pinch the fabric between my fingers, inspecting it for a moment or two before I yank the shirt up, running my hands over my stomach. There are bruises spread out all over my stomach, disappearing below the waistline of my shorts, and even just the slightest pressure on my ribs make me hiss in a breath. For one brief and very vain moment, my hands fly to my face, thoughts consumed with what my face must look like. My nose feels weird, in all likeliness broken, and there are swollen lumps and deep groves carved into my face, like a disjointed jigsaw puzzle. _Jesus Christ, I must look like the fucking Elephant Man_, I think bitterly to myself.

_At least you're alive, you fucktard_, that voice in the back of my mind curtly reminds me. Well, there's that at least. No health, definitely no happiness, but I'm still here.

"Well, who the fuck else am I going to take him too?!"

"You should not have taken him anyway. You should have left him to _die_."

The voices draw my attention to the door; I'm in a small wooden cabin, not unlike the last ones I had the pleasure of visiting, and there's little to no furniture, nothing except the bed I'm lying on and a chair sitting near my head. There's a heap of soiled bandages lying in a clumsy pile in a bowlful of coppery water, a needle sticking out from under the pile like a silver spider's leg. I look around for water, _drinkable water_, but there isn't any. My throat is so dry it'd be a suitable substitute for sandpaper.

"Is that what you would've done, then? Left the poor fucker to be tortured to death by that animal?" I recognise Jefferson's voice, and the emotion in his voice puts me on edge. He sounds_ pissed_. Like, mighty pissed.

The second voice, a deep and accented male voice, I don't recognise at all. He sounds like any of the other men walking around on this island. "Yes. That is _exactly _what I would have done. What you _should have _done."

"Well, then I'm sure as shit glad I ain't you," Jefferson spits back. There's a tense pause, which makes me nervous enough to try and push myself off the bed; I swing my legs off the side, wincing as every single muscle in my body groans, and I plant my feet on the ground, getting ready to push against the floor when conversation starts again. The unknown voice sighs. "We can help you fix him up, but we cannot keep him. Vaas' eye has been on us for too long anyway, and if he thinks we are housing… _Jason Brody_," the man sneers the name, mocking it. "He will come at us without mercy."

"I thought that was what you wanted? What your _boss _wanted?"

There's another tense pause. "We are not ready for war. Not yet."

"Yeah, well, Vaas is bringing the war to you, whether you like it or not."

"_No_," the mystery man spits, viciously. "Vaas is not coming here for war, Vaas is coming here for _him_!"

Well, it's not too hard to guess who the topic of conversation is here. I sigh and level a lazy kick at the chair next to me. It topples to the floor with an elegant crash and everything goes deathly silent outside. I sit patiently and count in my head, letting my eyes slide closed again for a moment.

_One potato, two potato_-

A drawn-out creaking sound fills the room then and I open my eyes, squinting against the harsh ray of sunlight streaming in through the small crack in the door. Jefferson's pale blue eyes stare back at me, hiding as meekly as a naughty child caught by a parent.

I give him a wave, trying to put as much sarcasm into the action as is humanly possible. "Come on in. Please excuse my appearance, some total _asshole _had the indecency to kick me right in the fucking face."

Jefferson snorts and pushes the door all the way open, letting the light rush eagerly inside, lighting up the whole room with a much friendlier glow. He smirks condescendingly down at me and folds his arms across his chest. I see he also got some new clothes, a nice fresh white shirt and some khaki cut-off shorts. I almost feel like pouting. _And I got a fucking potato sack. _

"Is that how the kids are saying thank you these days?" he drawls, his voice a hoarse growl just like mine.

I scowl at him. "You left Tommy behind-" I start to say, but Jefferson cuts me off with a wave of his hand. "I don't give a shit about Tommy, all right? If anything, I did your friend a favour by getting you out of there."

"And what an utterly _magnificent _fucking favour it was, but-"

"Look, kiddo, you really think Vaas is going to have the time to be selling off your friends while he's tearing up the whole island looking for you? Trust me, your friend is as safe as he's ever going to be on this fucking hellhole."

I glower at him, not wanting to admit that he's got a point.

Jefferson smirks. "You're very fucking welcome."

Another man, a man who I assume to be the other guy Jefferson was talking to a moment ago, steps into the doorframe, blocking out some of the glorious warm sun. I can no longer feel the bare heat of it on my bare arms and I hate him already for taking that simple pleasure away from me. I shift my glare onto him instead. He doesn't seem impressed. "Who the fuck is this?" I ask Jefferson, keeping a wary eye on the new guy. He's a dark skinned guy, very dark skinned, with thick black hair that looks like sheep's wool and a fuzzy black goatee on his chin; a pair of surprisingly stylish black framed glasses circle his eyes, and an olive green marine jacket covers his upper body, a gaggle of beaded necklaces looped around his neck. He has scars everywhere, including a very long and very thin one starting at his hairline and going all the way down to the cheek on the opposite side of his face. His eyes are lined by heavy black bags, making his face look even more gaunt than it already is, and the look in them is wild.

_There is not a single sane person left in this place, I goddamn guarantee it._

He meets my eyes coolly, running over my facial features with a judging look. I don't know what he's looking for, but he evidently finds it when he sniffs, unimpressed, and looks back at Jefferson. "You have until tonight to patch him up. Then, you leave." He turns to go and, for some reason, my blood boils. "_Hey. Jackass_." My voice is as cold as ice, as hard as stone, but that's nothing compared to the demented look he gives me when he turns around. Even more disturbing, this fails to disturb me. _We get it, you're a scary motherfucker, hoo fucking rah. I've seen scarier_. "Kicking me out of here isn't going to stop Vaas from marching in here and killing every single goddamn person you've got stashed away. He won't believe you when you say I'm gone, it'll just give him more incentive to look."

The man stares at me impassively, thinking fast. "You think that had not occurred to me already? You think this will keep you here any longer?"

"On the contrary, I'll leave right fucking now if you show me the front door."

A humourless smirk crosses his face. "And go where? To bring the war to Vaas?"

I smirk back. "First you couldn't wait to kick me out, now you're worrying where I'm gunna go when I do?"

"Not worrying. Wondering."

"Aw, that's real fucking sweet. And I'd _hate _to keep you in suspense, so here's what I'm going to do." I push my palms against the hard mattress and I force myself upright. I don't even wobble. I feel a strange rush of pride in myself. _One step at a time, I'm sure Vaas will just toddle along behind you to give you a headstart_. I place one foot uncertainly out in front of me, then the other; when I'm positive I'm not going to fall, I resume full striding walk and meet New Guy head-on, getting right up in his face. Fire fills me from head to toe. "I'm going to walk out that door and get my friends back."

New Guy smirks, having to bite down on his lip to stop himself from laughing out loud. "How? You have no weapons, you have no armour; you can barely walk right, and there is a army of demons lead by Satan himself scouring the land to find you. How, pray tell me, do you expect to survive even an hour without help?"

I look pointedly at Jefferson.

His face falls. "Oh, fucking hell."

"Come on, soldier, you knew this was coming."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

"Some enthusiasm, Jefferson, please."

New Guy observes this with a sceptical eye, a smirk pulling at his lips. "You two? Against Vaas' men?"

"I have no intention of going up against Vaas' men. I'm not interested in fighting a war, I'm not interested in conquering the villain. I want to get my friends and go home and convince somebody to nuke the fuck out of this place."

Jefferson snorts. "Fairytale ending there, Johnny."

"Shut up and start thinking of places where we might find some damsels in distress," I snap at him, losing my patience a little now.

Jefferson clears his throat. "I already did."

I turn to him, eyes wide. "What?"

"I already found one of your fucking damsels, jackass."

"Who?! Where?!"

Jefferson's face darkens. "This isn't going to be pleasant."

"I think that's par for the course now, Jefferson."

"Seriously, kid, it's going-"

I cut him off with a seething hiss and a glowering look.

He sighs.

"One of your guy friends. Not sure which one, but I got word saying that there's a new…" he pauses, watching my face carefully. "There's a new fighter at the Cellar, an old underground place one of Vaas' higher ups bought out and took over."

"The Cellar?" New Guy says warily. He glances at me. "A word of-"

"Thanks, but no thanks," I bark. I eye Jefferson. "You know where this is?" He nods slowly. "You can take us there from here?" An even slower nod. "Fantastic. Let's roll."

I push my way past both of them and into the sunlight, a brief smile crossing my face as the sun warms my exposed skin. _Closest thing I've been to blissful in days._ I refocus my gaze, homing in on a Jeep sitting directly in front of us. I glance back at New Guy and Jefferson. Jefferson looks, whole-heartedly, like he'd like to drop me back off at Vaas' camp already. I grin at him and jerk my thumb at the Jeep. "You can get rid of me faster in a car," I tell New Guy, flashing him my best Arrogant Jackass grin. He glares at me with such hatred, I'm not even mad, I'm impressed I can get him to hate me that quickly.

"The Cellar is a wretched place, full of bounty hunters, murderers, rapists, men who no longer have the right to call themselves human," New Guy shouts, power-walking after me as I walk to the Jeep. He catches up with me quickly and grasps my shoulder, yanking me around to face him. I clench my fists, preparing for a fight. He fixes me with a hard stare. "I knew the man Vaas thinks you are. I fought alongside him, I knew him as a friend, as a brother. You do not have his strength. His courage. _You _are not this man."

I smirk coldly. "Well, thank fucking god for that. If you wouldn't mind telling Vaas that, that'd be _super _fucking helpful for me."

New Guy shakes his head. "Take the Jeep. If you are so eager to meet your death, take it and go." He turns to leave and then pauses. He turns back and he withdraws a pistol from his belt, handing it to me with a reluctance that almost stops him. "Never say I didn't give you a fair chance."

"You don't really understand the definition of _fair_, do you."

He smirks again. "One last thing before you go. My name: is Dennis. Remember that when Vaas drags you kicking and screaming back to his camp."

"My name is John McCarthy. Remember _that _when Vaas burns your whole village to the ground and puts a bullet between your eyes."

Dennis backs away, keeping an eye on me the whole time. His smile is predatory. "You know nothing of these islands, John McCarthy."

I climb into the Jeep, not sparing Dennis a second glance as I start the engine, pocketing the gun carefully. _Note to self: ask Jefferson how to use a gun_. The idea of asking Dennis does not once cross my mind.

Jefferson climbs in next to me and immediately switches on the radio. I wish he hadn't. Vaas' words are mostly unintelligible, just bitter angry screams, but, after a moment, I can understand him.

"Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason. I'm coming for you, Jason. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, Jason? Jason? _**JASON**_."

I shut off the radio and glower at Jefferson.

He shrugs apologetically.

"Let's just get the fuck on with this, please?"


End file.
